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.
Penelope Fitzgerald
Penelope Fitzgerald, winner of the 1979 Booker Prize
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.
- Lived
- -
- Prizes judged
- The Booker Prize 1998
- The Booker Prize 1991
Winner 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.
Other nominated books
In Penelope Fitzgerald’s historical novel, two strangers wake up in the same bed after a bicycle crash. Complications, of both heart and head, ensue.
Not every town without a bookshop necessarily wants one, as Florence soon discovers in this wise and funny gem from Penelope Fitzgerald.
In Penelope Fitzgerald’s intriguing historical novel, a woman inexplicably disappears as the shadow of impending revolution hangs over imperial Russia.
