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Moon Tiger
Moon Tiger
May 7, 2025 5:32 AM

Author:Penelope Lively,Anthony Thwaite

Moon Tiger

Winner of the Booker Prize, Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger is the tale of a historian confronting her own, personal history, unearthing the passions and pains that have defined her life. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Anthony Thwaite.

Claudia Hampton, a beautiful, famous writer, lies dying in hospital. But, as the nurses tend to her with quiet condescension, she is plotting her greatest work: 'a history of the world ... and in the process, my own'. Gradually she re-creates the rich mosaic of her life and times, conjuring up those she has known. There is Gordon, her adored brother; Jasper, the charming, untrustworthy lover and father of Lisa, her cool, conventional daughter; and Tom, her one great love, both found and lost in wartime Egypt. Penelope Lively's Booker Prize-winning novel weaves an exquisite mesh of memories, flashbacks and shifting voices, in a haunting story of loss and desire.

Penelope Lively (b. 1933) was born in Cairo. 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 novels include Passing On, City of the Mind, Cleopatra's Sister and Heat Wave, and many are published by Penguin.

If you enjoyed Moon Tiger, you might like L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

'It's a fine, intelligent piece of work, the kind that Leaves its traces in the air long after you've put it away'

Anne Tyler

'Funny, thoughtful ... a perfect example of the Lively art'

Mark Lawson, Independent

Reviews

'Wonderfully-imagined...Richly atmospheric, stunningly graphic, intense and extraordinary'

—— NELSON DEMILLE

'A cracking, fast-paced contemporary re-telling of the legend that is Alexander ... Pressfield brings him alive for the modern audience with the verve and skill with which he conjured the heroes of Thermopylae in Gates of Fire.'

—— MANDA SCOTT

'If you want to know what it might have felt like to ride into battle with Alexander, read this striking book...blends a scholar's accuracy and a novelist's eye.'

—— BARRY STRAUSS, author of Salamis

'Pressfield has tackled a subject worthy of his enormous talent...and triumphed again.'

—— STEPHEN COONTS

'Deeply researched, dashingly written...this is a a terrific performance'

—— INDEPENDENT

'As all-conqueringly glamorous an account as Alexander himself'

—— SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE , DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Books of the Year'

'The acclaimed chronicler of Ancient Greek warriors tells of the mightiest of all...Pressfield succeeds quite brilliantly where a lesser novelist might stumble, enabling the legend to meet the man... [he] excels in depicting the blood, guts, glory and shame'

—— GOOD BOOK GUIDE

An important as well as a thrilling work of art

—— Independent on Sunday

A moving and powerful novel in which Dunmore employs all her celebrated descriptive and narrative skills...beautiful

—— Daily Mail

A harrowing, urgent narrative of cold, starvation and the battle to survive

—— Sunday Times

It is quite outstanding, full of beauty, pain and truth... We are lucky to have this book

—— Anne Chisholm , Sunday Telegraph

The facts surrounding the discovery of this book are as remarkable as its contents are magnificent... A triumph of indomitability and a masterwork of literary accomplishment

—— Sunday Times

Deftly translated by Sandra Smith, this is possibly the most devastating indictment of French manners and morals since Madame Bovary, as hypnotic as Proust at the biscuit tin, as gruelling as Genet on the prowl. Irène Nemirovsky is, on this evidence, a novelist of the very first order, perceptive to a fault and sly in her emotional restraint

—— Evening Standard

An heroic attempt to write a novel about a nightmare in which the author is entirely embedded

—— Anita Brookner , Spectator

Read this haunting novel, then read [Nemirovsky’s] letters in this edition to feel the full force of the work

—— Fiona Wilson , The Times

While marked by poppy wearing and memorial ceremonies, the First World War is also sustained through family history, handed down from one generation to the next. No book better articulates the impact of this narrative than Stephen Faulks’ Birdsong.

—— Lucy Middleton , Reader's Digest

A truly amazing read

—— Gail Teasdale , 24housing

I’d never read such descriptive literature, and couldn’t sleep at night for thinking about what I’d just read. His [Faulks] portrayal of terror on the battlefield is so powerful

—— Anna Redman , Good Housekeeping

My all-time favourite book

—— Kate Garraway , Good Housekeeping
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