Ostensibly a novel about one woman’s extraordinary life, there’s nothing conventional about either Lively’s leading lady or the way in which the author tells her complex and intriguingly jagged-edged story
Moon Tiger
Written by Penelope Lively
- Winner
- The Booker Prize 1987
- Published by Deutsch
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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.
Penelope Lively
Penelope Lively won the Booker Prize in 1987 and has also been shortlisted twice – in 1977 and 1984
More about Penelope Lively 
Other nominated books by Penelope Lively
A respectable married man becomes unstuck in Penelope Lively’s witty take on love, literature and the dangers of middle-aged folly
Through the life-changing experiences of 40-year-old Ann, Penelope Lively offers a subtle exploration of memory and identity, chance and consequence
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