Olivia Manning​ (1908–1980) was a British novelist, poet, writer and reviewer.

Her fiction and

non-fiction, frequently detailing journeys and personal odysseys, were principally set in England,
Ireland, Europe and the Middle East. Her first serious novel, ​The Wind Changes,​ was published in
1937. She lived in ​Bucharest​, Romania, and in Greece, Egypt and Palestine, as ​Nazi Germany
overran Eastern Europe. Her experiences helped form the six novels making up ​The Balkan Trilogy
and ​The Levant Trilogy​, known collectively as ​Fortunes of War​. The overall quality of her output was
considered uneven by critics, but this series, published between 1960 and 1980, was described by
Anthony Burgess​ as "the finest fictional record of the war produced by a British writer". Manning
returned to London after the war, writing poetry, short stories, novels, non-fiction, reviews, and
drama for the ​British Broadcasting Corporation​. As she had feared, real fame only came after her
death, when ​an adaptation of ​Fortunes of War​ was televised in 1987.