Moon Tiger

Penelope Lively's Booker Prize winning classic, published as a Penguin Essential for the first timeClaudia Hampton - beautiful, famous, independent, dying.But she remains defiant to the last, telling her nurses that she will write a 'history of the world . . . and in the process, my own'. And it is her story from a childhood just after the First World War through the Second and beyond. But Claudia's life is entwined with others and she must allow those who knew her, loved her, the chance to speak, to put across their point of view. There is Gordon, brother and adversary; Jasper, her untrustworthy lover and father of Lisa, her cool conventional daughter; and then there is Tom, her one great love, found and lost in wartime Egypt.Moon Tiger is a haunting story of loss and desire.

Leaves its traces in the air long after you've put it away Anne Tyler
A complex tapestry of great subtlety. Lively writes so well, savouring the words as she goes Daily Telegraph
Very clever: evocative, thought-provoking and hangs on the mind long after it is finished Literary Review
Lively's ability to bring her character and the world she inhabits into full technicolour is beautiful. This is a unique book about a fascinating unpredictable woman way ahead of her time and yet absolutely of her time Lemn Sissay
One of Britain's most celebrated novelists. Moon Tiger's multiple, shifting viewpoints weaves an eloquent disquisition on memory, identity, age, love and regret Financial Times
Atmospheric, inventive. Few books I've read recently have given me so much pleasure Sam Jordison, Guardian

Penelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize- once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger. Her other books include Going Back; Judgement Day; Next to Nature, Art; Perfect Happiness; Passing On; City of the Mind; Cleopatra's Sister; Heat Wave; Beyond the Blue Mountains, a collection of short stories; Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; her autobiographical work, A House Unlocked; The Photograph; Making It Up; Consequences; Family Album, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award, and How It All Began. She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year's Honours List, and DBE in 2012. Penelope Lively lives in London.

' "I'm writing a history of the world," she says . . . And in the process, my own.' Claudia Hampton is dying. A professional historian in her seventies, she casts her mind back through her own life to identify the currents and winds upon which she has been cast adrift. We see how this strong, independent woman, growing up between the wars, finds her life subtly entwined with others. She meets and loses her true love in war-torn Egypt, finds an untrustworthy lover, gives birth to a daughter she cannot love and attempts to reconcile who she has become with the woman she always wants to be . . . Winner of the Booker Prize 'Leaves its traces in the air long after you've put it away' Anne Tyler

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