Offshore

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE FEATURED ON BBC’S BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB Penelope Fitzgerald’s Booker Prize-winning novel of loneliness and connecting is set among the houseboat community of the Thames, with an introduction from Alan Hollinghurst. On Battersea Reach, a mixed bag of the temporarily lost and the patently eccentric live on houseboats, rising and falling with the tide of the Thames. There is good-natured Maurice, by occupation a male prostitute, by chance a receiver of stolen goods. And Richard, an ex-navy man whose boat, much like its owner, dominates the Reach. Then there is Nenna, an abandoned wife and mother of two young girls running wild on the muddy foreshore, whose domestic predicament, as it deepens, will draw this disparate community together. Offshore, a literary masterpiece by Penelope Fitzgerald, is an award-winning fiction that humorously explores the lives of an urban houseboat community. Long-listed for several awards, this top-rated book beautifully intertwines elements of satire and romance. For fans of Barbara Kingsolver (Demon Copperhead), Kate Atkinson (Shrines of Gaiety), Rose Tremain (Absolutely and Forever), William Boyd (The Romantic), and John Banville (Ancient Light).