The whole purpose of magic is the fulfilment and intensification of desire, claims the ventriloquist-narrator as he tells his stories of love and catastrophe. The novel is a parable of miscegenation and racial exclusiveness, of nature defying cult...
A Nobel laureate struggles to write a convincing suicide note; a hobo sings of hope in the darkest hours after the Grenfell disaster; in a strange post-death waiting room, Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary exchange confidences, and a scientist finally...
'An exceptionally talented writer of prose fiction' TLS 'Pauline Melville is a find - ' Guardian
Pauline Melville's first book, Shape-Shifter, won the Guardian Fiction Prize, the MacMillan Silver Pen Award and a Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Her novel, The Ventriloquist's Tale, won the Whitbread First Novel Award. She lives in London.