Carol Shields’s novels include Unless; Larry’s Party, winner of The Women’s Prize; The Stone Diaries, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and shortlisted for the Booker Prize; The Republic of Love; Happenstance; and Mary Swann. Dressing Up for the Carnivaland Various Miracles, collections of short stories, were later published as The Collected Stories. Brought up in Chicago, Shields lived in Canada from 1957 until her death in 2003.

‘A brilliant fictional reflection on what it may be like to be a man in the late twentieth century’ Penelope Lively, Independent‘Exhilarating’ Sunday Times‘Like all of Shields’ work, filled with warmth and understanding’ The Times‘Shields demonstrates once again her extreme mastery of emotional geometry’ Sunday Telegraph ‘