Penelope Fitzgerald

Lived: 17 December 1916 - 28 April 2000
Prizes judged: The Booker Prize 1998
The Booker Prize 1991

The novelist and biographer Penelope Fitzgerald won the Booker Prize in 1979 with Offshore before executing a poacher-turned-gamekeeper u-turn and joining the 1991 judging panel

Fitzgerald, who died in 2000, did not start her literary career until the age of 58 and won the Booker Prize with her third novel, Offshore, set among a houseboat community. She herself lived on a houseboat in Battersea that sank twice, the second time taking both itself and her belongings to the bottom of the Thames. Before turning to writing, Fitzgerald had known homelessness. She had also taught at various schools and could number both the future Duchess of Cornwall and the Booker Prize-shortlisted Edward St Aubyn among her former pupils.

Read more on Penelope Fitzgerald

Richard Powers on Offshore

As part of a series for the Booker website, shortlisted writers choose a book from the Booker Library that has had a profound impact on them. Richard Powers reaches out of his comfort zone to pick up Penelope Fitzgerald’s Offshore, which, when he finally puts it down, leaves him ‘a different kind of reader’.

Offshore

Penelope Fitzgerald’s Offshore was based on her real experiences living on a boat. Find out more about the book, and hear from the Man Booker Prize-winner who loves it, here.

Offshore

Winner of The Booker Prize 1979

By: Penelope Fitzgerald
Published by: Collins

The shortest novel to win the Booker Prize, Penelope Fitzgerald offers a delightful glimpse into the workings of the eccentric London community living on houseboats on Battersea Reach