Penelope Lively’s timeless, Booker Prize-winning novel explores the shifting nature of reality and identity through the many lives of its narrator.

Claudia Hampton, a famous writer, lies dying in hospital. But as the nurses tend to her with quiet condescension, she is plotting her greatest work: ‘a history of the world… and in the process, my own’. Gradually she re-creates the rich mosaic of her life and times, conjuring up those she has known. There is Gordon, her adored brother; Jasper, the charming, untrustworthy lover and father of Lisa, her cool, conventional daughter; and Tom, her one great love, both found and lost in wartime Egypt.

Winner
The Booker Prize 1987
Published by
Deutsch
Publication date
Penelope Lively

Penelope Lively

About the Author

Penelope Lively won the Booker Prize in 1987 and has also been shortlisted twice - in 1977 and 1984. She was born in Cairo and is the author of many prize-winning novels and short story collections for both adults and children.
More about Penelope Lively

Other nominated books by Penelope Lively

According to Mark
The Road To Lichfield