P.N. GWYNNE

In the real world, the pseudonymous P. N. GWYNNE is an American (though, until recently, European-based) business executive and consultant who's well acquainted with the Middle East, South America and Asia, and who's lived and worked in half the countries of sub-Saharan Africa.

(He adopted a pseudonym for his fiction writing when his first novel was about to be published; see elsewhere in this site: PNG INTERVIEW)

Before going into private business, he was a US Army 1st Lieutenant who was awarded the Bronze Star in Vietnam. From that he joined the CIA and became an officer in its Clandestine Service, with whom he served as a paramilitary in northern Laos.

In the late 1970s and early 80s, while a director of a mining company there, (and although always an American citizen), he was also Honorary British Consul in the Central African Republic.

After the publication of his first novel, (FIRMLY BY THE TAIL, in 1976), he was named “One Of The Best ‘Neglected’ Novelists Of The Year” in 1977 by THE NATIONAL OBSERVER, (Washington D.C.)

In the Central African Republic, (where he lived and worked from 1971 through 1983) he cut out a dirt “road” through the jungle and put up a sort of house/office in the mineral-rich bush, west of the town of Carnot, around which a village grew which the locals named after him (“Jackville”). For a large portion of the rest of his professional life he has worked (and frequently lived) in other parts of West, Southern and Central Africa — operating from a base in Europe. He and his family lived and worked in Cape Town for a year (1984-85).

In 2000 he testified by invitation as an expert witness before the House Ways And Means Committee's Sub-Committee on International Trade, on the then-vexed subject of war and diamonds in Africa.

From 2006 through 2016, multiple opinion pieces of his were published in National Review and The Wall Street Journal, both online and in their paper versions — on such varied subjects as “blood diamonds”, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, “Charlie-Hebdo” magazine, private and public pre-emption of events, and the CIA’s “secret war” in Laos. 

In 2016 he appeared in a Discovery Channel (Spain) documentary on the continuing resistance of the Hmong people of northern Laos — a subject upon which he later (in 2018) spoke, by invitation, at the European Parliament.

From 2019 through 2021 he was repeatedly invited onto The Debbie Aldrich Show, (seen on various social media platforms), to help dissect current affairs.

He spent his “middle school” years at the same establishment (the New York Military Academy) as Donald Trump, and competed interscholastically on the same football and baseball teams with the future president.

He once played Ronald Reagan on stage in a British “pantomime” version of “Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs”. (To borrow from Hunter S. Thompson: “a strange and terrible saga”)

Completely fluent in French and Spanish, he is a member of The Special Forces Club in London, the Air America Association, the (US) Special Operations Association, and Alpha Delta Phi fraternity (whose chapter president he was at Cornell University).

Married, with two professionally accomplished daughters and two grandchildren, he only recently returned from Europe to resume life in his native New York.