At the age of 40, after writing poetry and prose for more than 20 years without much in the way of public acknowledgement, Martin Booth published his novel Hiroshima Joe, which became a bestseller, emancipated him from his schoolmastering job in Somerset and enabled him to write full-time. After that success in 1985, novels became the staple of Booth’s income from authorship, though he also wrote biography and historical works, as well as fiction for children and, as he said, anything “that interested him”.

He had a workmanlike attitude to his craft, having a higher regard for a steady income than for literary critical plaudits. He was quite happy for his own novels to be regarded as no more than “good reads”. Yet, surprisingly, there was to come a time when, again, his work was to be pronounced unsaleable. In 1998 his agent of the time told him that his new novel The Industry of Souls, had no commercial future — a verdict that terrified Booth, who was dependent on his writing.

But he persevered, and the novel eventually appeared under the imprint of Dewi Lewis Publishing, a little-known Stockport publisher which had entered the field of fiction. The book remained resolutely unreviewed and seemed likely, as predicted, to sink without trace. Then, to universal astonishment — not the least Booth’s — The Industry of Souls appeared on the Booker Prize shortlist. It was a pleasant irony that the thoroughly modest Booth appreciated, and he accepted the downs and ups of the situation without rancour.

Martin Booth was born in the Lancashire village of Ribchester in 1944. But his early life was spent substantially in Hong Kong, where his father, who worked in the Colonial Service, was posted when Martin was seven. There was also a three-year spell in Kenya, after which the family returned to Hong Kong. Both places were to lend themselves as backgrounds to his fiction and non-fictional works, though it was the vividly realised sights and sounds of Hong Kong, as well as the more secretive parts of its economic culture, that made the greatest impact. Booth completed his secondary education at King George V School, Kowloon.

He had already begun to write poetry, substantially influenced by Edmund Blunden, who taught at the University of Hong Kong. When Booth returned to England at the age of 20, the poetry boom of the 1960s was in full flow, and he had a number of poems published without difficulty. He took several odd jobs — clerking, driving a delivery van, and waiting — before obtaining a teaching qualification and settling down to life as a schoolmaster.

All the while he continued to publish volumes of poetry with small imprints, among them The Crying Embers (1971) which won a Gregory Award; Pilgrims and Partitions (1972); Coronis (1973); The Knotting Sequence and Extending Upon the Kingdom (both 1978). In the best of his poems, the more discerning sort of reviewer detected experience observed and communicated with force and clarity. Booth’s highly individualistic review of the contemporary scene, British Poetry 1964-84, appeared in 1985.

Among the handful of novels he wrote in this period was the murder mystery The Bad Track (1980). From 1968 to 1981 he also ran the Sceptre Press, which published a series of small-format volumes featuring the work of poets including Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney.

The appearance of Hiroshima Joe in 1985 transformed this career of literary toil. A graphic tale of the slide into criminality and dereliction of a British former prisoner of war of the Japanese, whose postwar life in Hong Kong has been blighted by the effects of the Hiroshima bomb, the novel vividly evoked the life of the 1950s colony in which Booth grew up. Physically in decay and morally degenerate, forced to run errands for the Triads between thieving and homosexual soliciting, the book’s protagonist neverthless evoked the reader’s sympathy. Hiroshima Joe sold more than 350,000 copies.

On the proceeds Booth was able to leave his job as head of English at Castle School, Taunton, and devote himself to authorship full time. Among his subsequent novels were: A Very Private Gentleman (1991) set in Italy, a country which was another of his loves; Adrift in the Oceans of Mercy (1996); The Industry of Souls (1998); and Islands of Silence (2002), an examination of the impact of war on human relationships, seen through the eyes of a young architect, who finds himself on the Gallipoli beaches after the outbreak of war in 1914.

Inspired by a visit to St Petersburg, The Industry of Souls told the story of a British businessman condemned to 20 years in the gulag for allegedly spying on the Soviet Union. After initially being turned down and then ignored, it began to receive respectful attention from reviewers after the Booker shortlisting — which did no harm to its sales either.

Among Booth’s works of children’s fiction were War Dog (1997) and Music on the Bamboo Radio (1998). His non- fictional works included The Dragon and the Pearl: A Hong Kong Notebook (1994); Opium: A History (1996); The Dragon Syndicates (1999), about the Triads; A Magick Life: A Biography of Aleister Crowley (2000); and Cannabis: A History (2003). He also produced filmscripts and contributed to wildlife documentaries, besides being busy as a reviewer.

Booth continued to apply himself to his craft after cancer was diagnosed 16 months ago. Among the works he completed in that period were three more children’s books and a long-meditated memoir of his childhood years.

Booth married Helen Barber in 1968. She and a son and daughter survive him.

Martin Booth, author, was born on September 7, 1944. He died of cancer on February 12, 2004, aged 59.