Blue Ticket

A devastating and euphoric road trip novel about desire, choice and the meaning of free will, from the Man Booker-longlisted author of The Water Cure Calla knows how the lottery works. Everyone does. On the day of your first bleed, you report to the station to learn what kind of woman you will be. A white ticket grants you children. A blue ticket grants you freedom. You are relieved of the terrible burden of choice. And, once you've taken your ticket, there is no going back. But what if the life you're given is the wrong one? Blue Ticket is a devastating enquiry into free will and the fraught space of motherhood. Bold and chilling, it pushes beneath the skin of female identity and patriarchal violence, to the point where human longing meets our animal bodies.

“Mesmerising”

Sophie Mackintosh is the author of The Water Cure, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018 and won a Betty Trask Award 2019. She has also won the White Review Short Story Prize and the Virago/Stylist Short Story Competition, and has been published in Granta, The White Review and TANK magazine among others. Her second novel, Blue Ticket , comes out in summer 2020.