Christine Aziz has worked as a shop assistant, dental receptionist, factory packer, singer, cleaning lady, actress, journalist, community worker and English teacher.

She also fancied having a go at being a novelist, which was why she entered Richard & Judy's How To Get Published competition.

She won - her debut novel, The Olive Readers, beating 46,000 other entries to win Christine a publishing contract.

The good news is that Christine really can write. The Olive Readers is a surprising story of love and revolution set in a dystopian near-future ruled by mega corporations-turned-states.

These corporations have combined to form a Federation that governs the world. Books are banned, and peoples' histories, traditions and even nationalities have all been wiped out.

Jephzat, the heroine, lives in a remote village in Olea - the corporation/state that has a global monopoly on olive oil production. She falls in love with olive picker Homer - and is inducted into the Readers, an underground group who keep a secret library of forbidden books and are plotting revolution.

Jephzat reluctantly becomes a revolutionary leader - and finds herself being sent on a dangerous, underground mission to the Water State which, with its monopoly on the production of fresh water, is the world's reigning superpower.

Occasionally, the science doesn't quite convince - but otherwise this is a gripping, well-written novel that has already been compared, not without justification, to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

Updated: 16:35 Friday, October 28, 2005