The Porpoise: Mark Haddon - Softcover

Haddon, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 152911070X ISBN 13: 9781529110708

Publisher: Vintage, 2020

Synopsis

‘Just downright brilliant... a transcendent, transporting experience’ Observer

A motherless girl grows up in isolated luxury, hidden from the world by her wealthy father. She believes their life together is normal – but as time passes, she has a growing sense that something between them is very wrong.

She cannot escape, so she seeks solace in her books. Her favourite tales are those that conjure ancient worlds – of angry gods and heroic mortals, one of whom will some day come to her rescue.

Soon, she will forget where the page ends and her mind begins.

‘A full-throttle blast of storytelling mastery’ Max Porter

About this title

About the Author

Mark Haddon is a writer and artist. His bestselling novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, was published simultaneously by Jonathan Cape and David Fickling in 2003. It won seventeen literary prizes, including the Whitbread Award. In 2012, a stage adaptation by Simon Stephens was produced by the National Theatre and went on to win 7 Olivier Awards in 2013 and the 2015 Tony Award for Best Play. In 2005 his poetry collection, The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea, was published by Picador, and his play, Polar Bears, was produced by the Donmar Warehouse in 2010. The Pier Falls, a collection of short stories, was also published by Cape in 2016. To commemorate the centenary of the Hogarth Press he wrote and illustrated a short story that appeared alongside Virginia Woolf's first story for the press in Two Stories (Hogarth, 2017). His most recent novel, The Porpoise, was published by Chatto & Windus in 2019.

From the Back Cover

A newborn baby is the sole survivor of a terrifying plane crash. She is raised in wealthy isolation by an overprotective father. She knows nothing of the rumours about a beautiful young woman, hidden from the world. When a suitor visits, he understands far more than he should. Forced to run for his life, he escapes aboard The Porpoise, an assassin on his tail… So begins a wild adventure of a novel, damp with salt spray, blood and tears. A novel that leaps from the modern era to ancient times; a novel that soars, and sails, and burns long and bright; a novel that almost drowns in grief yet swims ashore; in which pirates rampage, a princess wins a wrestler's hand, and ghost women with lampreys' teeth drag a man to hell - and in which the members of a shattered family, adrift in a violent world, journey towards a place called home.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 152911070X
• ISBN 13: 9781529110708
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336