Home
/
Fiction
/
City of the Mind
City of the Mind
Jan 11, 2026 5:04 PM

Author:Penelope Lively

City of the Mind

City of the Mindis the second novel by Booker Prize winning author Penelope Lively.

'This is the city in which everything is simultaneous. There is no yesterday, nor tomorrow, merely weather, and decay, and construction.'

In London's changing heartland, architect Matthew Halland is aware of how the past and the present blend. It stirs memories of his boyhood, the early years of his daughter Jane and the failed marriage that he has almost put behind him. Here too is the London of prehistory, of Georgian elegance, of the Blitz. But Matthew is occupied with constructing a new future for London in Docklands, and with it he begins to forge new beginnings of his own.

'A glorious novel' Observer

'The descriptions of the London Blitz are achingly real' Sunday Telegraph

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.

Reviews

'TAKE A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE WITH ALISON TYLER - YOU WILL ENJOY THE TRIP'

—— THE ROMANCE REVIEW WEBSITE

A fun, sexy read, with a definite post Sex and the City feel.

—— www.erotica-readers.com

Gripping and beautifully written

—— Scotsman

Grips the reader from the start... Lean, artful, assured

—— Spectator

James Lasdun is a tremendous writer and Seven Lies is that rare thing, a novel that delivers on every level. It is so gripping that you want to gobble it down at a single sitting, and yet the prose is so exacting that you want to linger over every sentence

—— Geoff Dyer

The descriptive brilliance leaves a lasting impression

—— Jonathan Derbyshire , Financial Times

Lasdun's second novel has much of the thriller about it. But its more sinuous power comes from other duplicities in Stefan's previous life: a glorious section of the book involves his teenage self plagiarising Walt Whitman to impress his mother's salon, all the while bribing a pederast janitor with aquavit to gain access to the source material

—— Alex Clark , Observer

The imaginativeness with which he explores the politics of expectation and failure runs deep...Seven Lies combines the knuckle-whitening tension of a thriller with literary wit and the precision of a surgeon seeking to tease out rotten flesh. Definitely a novel to be admired

—— Economist

Seven Lies...has a way of enlarging the spirit and refreshing the mind far more comprehensively than many books with twice its 200 pages

—— James Buchan , Guardian

[T]his seems to be an artful evocation of the effect of totalitarianism on the individual. But if this sounds drably psychological, I am doing the novel a disservice: it is short, intense, powerful and superbly crafted

—— Chris Power , The Times

Intricately plotted and structured, its prose both elegant and poised, Seven Lies could be read as a fable about the political and spiritual corruption endemic in a totalitarian state. It is, however, very much concerned with the human cost of deception and betrayal

—— Tim Parks , Sunday Times

A brilliant and darkly funny tale of politics and paranoia

—— Christina Patterson , Independent
Comments
Welcome to zzdbook comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.zzdbook.com All Rights Reserved