Moon Tiger

THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING, GOLDEN BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED CLASSIC, NOW WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY ELIF SHAFAK 
 
Claudia Hampton - beautiful, famous, independent, dying. 
 
But she remains defiant to the last, telling her nurses that she will write a 'history of the world . . . and in the process, my own'. And it is her story from a childhood just after the First World War through the Second and beyond. But Claudia's life is entwined with others and she must allow those who knew her, loved her, the chance to speak, to put across their point of view. There is Gordon, brother and adversary; Jasper, her untrustworthy lover and father of Lisa, her cool conventional daughter; and then there is Tom, her one great love, found and lost in wartime Egypt. 
 
The masterpiece of one of the century's finest novelists, Moon Tiger is a haunting, evocative and dazzlingly original story of loss and desire. 
 
'Leaves its traces in the air long after you've put it away' Anne Tyler 
 
'A complex tapestry of great subtlety. Lively writes so well, savouring the words as she goes' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Fascinating ... Way ahead of her time and yet absolutely of her time' Lemn Sissay

Leaves its traces in the air long after you've put it away

A complex tapestry of great subtlety. Lively writes so well, savouring the words as she goes

Very clever: evocative, thought-provoking and hangs on the mind long after it is finished

Lively's ability to bring her character and the world she inhabits into full technicolour is beautiful. This is a unique book about a fascinating unpredictable woman way ahead of her time and yet absolutely of her time

One of Britain's most celebrated novelists. Moon Tiger's multiple, shifting viewpoints weaves an eloquent disquisition on memory, identity, age, love and regret

Atmospheric, inventive. Few books I've read recently have given me so much pleasure

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. 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.

Claudia Hampton - beautiful, famous, independent, dying. 
 
But she remains defiant to the last, telling her nurses that she will write a 'history of the world . . . and in the process, my own'. And it is her story from a childhood just after the First World War through the Second and beyond. But Claudia's life is entwined with others and she must allow those who knew her, loved her, the chance to speak, to put across their point of view. There is Gordon, brother and adversary; Jasper, her untrustworthy lover and father of Lisa, her cool conventional daughter; and then there is Tom, her one great love, found and lost in wartime Egypt. 
 
The masterpiece of one of the century's finest novelists, Moon Tiger is a haunting, evocative and dazzlingly original story of loss and desire - now with a new introduction by Elif Shafak.

Selected Stories

Metamorphosis

Including new and never-before-published stories and forgotten treasures: the definitive selection of short stories from one of our greatest living writers, curated by the author herself 
 
Wry, compassionate and glittering with wit, Penelope Lively's stories get beneath the everyday to the beating heart of human experience. 
 
In intimate tales of growing up and growing old, chance encounters and life-long relationships, Lively explores with keen insight the ways that individuals can become tangled in history, and small acts ripple through the generations. 
 
From new and never-before-published stories to forgotten treasures, Metamorphosis showcases the very best from a literary master. 
 
'Lively has the gift, rare and wonderful, of being able to peel back the layers one by one and set them before us, translucent and gleaming' Sunday Telegraph 
 
'Superb...The writing is as good as it gets' The Times 
 
'Lively has guts and style. You are in the hands of a master' Daily Mail

Thoughtful, intelligent and light of touch. Lively has the gift, rare and wonderful, of being able to peel back the layers one by one and set them before us, translucent and gleaming

A sublime storyteller . . . she has us riveted with curiosity as to what will happen next, yet also keeps us consistently aware of the nature of the illusion

Each story encapsulates a vividly imagined universe... covering a broad range of styles with ease and elegance, it is a witty and grounding collection

Superb, unmissable ...The writing is as good as it gets

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.

Wry, compassionate, and glittering with wit, Penelope Lively's stories get beneath the everyday to the beating heart of human experience. In intimate stories of growing up and growing old, chance encounters and life-long relationships, Lively explores with keen insight the ways that individuals can become tangled in history, and small acts ripple through the generations. From new and never-before-published stories to forgotten treasures, Metamorphosis showcases the very best from a literary master.

The Photograph

A gorgeous novel by the Booker-winning author, now a Penguin Essential

'DO NOT OPEN - DESTROY.' 
 
The words on the envelope he has found are written in Kath's hand, but Glyn ignores his wife's instruction and breaks the seal. His life unwinds. For he finds a photograph showing Kath holding hands with another man. Unable to forget this long-ago act of betrayal he recklessly excavates the past, seeking out who knew what, tearing apart other lives as he tries to dig up the roots of his wife's infidelity. But what is the truth about Kath? What is the truth about their love? And can it survive this? 
 
'Remarkable' Sunday Telegraph

Penelope Lively has written many prize-winning novels for adults and children.  They include The Road to Lichfield, According To Mark. Moon Tiger (which won the 1987 Booker Prize), Heatwave and Spiderweb.  Penelope Lively lives in London N1.

Searching through a little-used cupboard at home, Glyn Peters chances upon a photograph he has never seen before. Taken in high summer, many years earlier, it shows his wife, Kath, holding hands with another man. 
 
Glyn's work as a historian should have inured him to unexpected findings and reversals, but he is ill-prepared for this radical shift in perception. His mind fills with questions. Who was the man? Who took the photograph? Where was it taken? When? Had Kath planned for him to find out all along? 
 
As Glyn begins to search for answers, he, and those around him, find the certainties of the past and present slip away, and the picture of the beautiful woman they all thought they knew distort.

Life in the Garden

'Wonderful. A manifesto of horticultural delight' Literary Review 
 
 'Beautiful. Perfect for literary garden lovers' Good Housekeeping 
 
'Rich and unusual, a book to treasure. Few recent gardening books come anywhere close to its style, intelligence and depth' Observer 
 
'The two central activities in my life - alongside writing - have been reading and gardening.' 
 
Penelope Lively has always been a keen gardener. This book is partly a memoir of her own life in gardens: the large garden at home in Cairo where she spent most of her childhood, her grandmother's garden in a sloping Somerset field, then two successive Oxfordshire gardens of her own, and the smaller urban garden in the North London home she lives in today. It is also a wise, engaging and far-ranging exploration of gardens in literature, from Paradise Lost to Alice in Wonderland, and of writers and their gardens, from Virginia Woolf to Philip Larkin. 
 
 'Exquisite and original' Daily Telegraph 
 
 'A gentle survey of the garden's place in Western culture, which morphs into a personal meditation on time, memory and a life well lived' i 
 
 'Scholarly bedtime reading' The Times, Books of the Year

Rich and unusual, this is a book to treasure. Few recent gardening books come anywhere close to its style, intelligence and depth. Moves between Lively's own horticultural life and a broad history of gardening

A gentle, scholarly progress through the lives and works of Penelope Lively's favoured authors - from Jane Austen to Beatrix Potter, Philip Larkin to Tom Stoppard

Enchanting. Reading this book is like walking with a wise, humorous guide through a series of garden rooms . . . and finding that vistas suddenly open out, on to history, fashion, politics, reflections on time and the taming of nature

Lively finds memories of her own gardens scrambling like roses through insights into the history of gardening and the artists - including Woolf, Monet and PG Wodehouse - who have been inspired by their gardens

Elegant, entertaining and inspirational

The perfect book for dedicated garden lovers

Penelope Lively was born in Cairo, Egypt and spent her childhood there. She came to England at the age of twelve, in 1945, and went to boarding school in Sussex. She went on to read Modern History at St Anne's College, Oxford. In 1957 she married Jack Lively (who died in 1998). They had two children, Josephine and Adam. Jack Lively's academic career took the family from Swansea to Sussex and Oxford, and eventually to Warwick University, where he was Professor of Politics. Penelope Lively now has six grandchildren and lives in London.

Penelope Lively has always been a keen gardener. This book is partly a memoir of her own life in gardens: the large garden at home in Cairo where she spent most of her childhood, her grandmother's garden in a sloping Somerset field, then two successive Oxfordshire gardens of her own, and the smaller urban garden in the North London home she lives in today. It is also a wise, engaging and far-ranging exploration of gardens in literature, from Paradise Lost to Alice in Wonderland, and of writers and their gardens, from Virginia Woolf to Philip Larkin.

The Road To Lichfield

The Road to Lichfield is the Booker Prize shortlisted first novel by Penelope Lively, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time on the 40th anniversary of its publication. 
 
Ann Linton leaves her family in Berkshire and sets up camp in her father's house when he is taken into a nursing home in distant Lichfield. As she shares his last weeks she meets David Fielding, and the love they share brings her feelings into sharp focus. Deeply felt, beautifully controlled, The Road to Lichfield is a subtle exploration of memory and identity, of chance and consequence, of the intricate weave of generations across a past never fully known, and a future never fully anticipated. 
 
'A searing study of the peculiar state of being in love . . . there are few contemporary novelists to match her on this subject' 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, which was shortlisted for the 1989 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award; 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 has also written radio and television scripts and has acted as presenter for a BBC Radio 4 programme on children's literature. 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.

Ann Linton leaves her family in Berkshire and sets up camp in her father's house when he is taken into a nursing home in distant Lichfield. As she shares his last weeks she meets David Fielding, and the love they share brings her feelings into sharp focus. Deeply felt, beautifully controlled, The Road to Lichfield is a subtle exploration of memory and identity, of chance and consequence, of the intricate weave of generations across a past never fully known, and a future never fully anticipated.

The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories

'Lively remains a sublime storyteller' Guardian on How It All Began 
 
'More stylish than many writers half her age . . . Lively knows a thing of two about storytelling.' The Times on How It All Began 
 
A dream house that is hiding something sinister; two women having lunch who share a husband; an old woman doing her weekly supermarket shop with a secret past that no one could guess; a couple who don't know each other at all even after fifteen years together; and, in the story from which this collection takes its name, a bird and a servant girl in ancient Pompeii who cannot converse, but share a perfect understanding. 
 
In this new and varied collection of short stories, Penelope Lively shows that she remains a master of her craft, and one of our finest English writers.

Carefully thought-out stories. . . Patterns of interaction between past and present are sounded out to good effect.

Lively has guts and style. . . You are in the hands of a master

Her new collection of short stories is perfect. It is a very wide range of short stories and each one has an unexpected twist in the tale.

Thoughtful, intelligent and light of touch . . . Lively has the gift, rare and wonderful, of being able to peel back the layers one by one and set them before us, translucent and gleaming.

Spry and world-wise, The Purple Swamp Hen is an enchanting story that sets the tone for the rest of this stellar collection.

More stylish than many writers half her age . . . Lively knows a thing or two about storytelling.

Lively is now nearly 80 but, as How It All Began shows, there is no diminution of her skills . . . Lively is a writer of craft and sagacity and such old fashioned virtues trump the chic but meretricious every time.

Penelope Lively at her best, sharp-eyed but sympathetic, deftly steering the reader from one point of view to another. This novel should delight her regular readers and ensnare new ones.

Lively skilfully mingles past and present, as she peels away the layers to uncover a family secret of which no one speaks...Lively's astute skewering of family relations reverberates in the mind long afterwards.

David Vann on Family Album, Guardian Books of the Year

Sensuous and beautiful prose...proof that the best novelists change and grow.

Neatly constructed, lucidly written and full of admirable sentiments.

Masterful. Transforms the every day into something rich.

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 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.

A dream house that is hiding something sinister; two women having lunch who share a husband;  an old woman doing her weekly supermarket shop with a secret past that no one could guess; a couple who don't know each other at all even after fifteen years together; and, in the story from which this collection takes its name, a bird and a servant girl in ancient Pompeii who cannot converse, but share a perfect understanding. In this new and varied collection of short stories, Penelope Lively shows that she remains a master of her craft, and one of our finest English writers.

The House in Norham Gardens

A series of children's modern classic novels by renowned 20th century children's writers. All the titles in this series have the A Puffin Book logo, contemporary-style covers, and child-friendly endnotes.

No.40 Norham Gardens, Oxford, is the home of Clare Mayfield, her two aged aunts and two lodgers. The house is a huge Victorian monstrosity, with rooms all full of old furniture, old papers, old clothes, memorabilia - it is like a living museum. 
Clare discovers in a junk room the vividly painted shield which her great-grandfather, an eminent anthropologist, had brought back from New Guinea. She becomes obsessed with its past and determined to find out more about its strange tribal origins. 
Dreams begin to haunt her - dreams of another country, another culture, another time, and of shadowy people whom she feels are watching her. Who are they, and what do they want?

No.40 Norham Gardens, Oxford, is the home of Clare Mayfield, her two aged aunts and two lodgers. The house is a huge Victorian monstrosity, with rooms all full of old furniture, old papers, old clothes, memorabilia - it is like a living museum. 
Clare discovers in a junk room the vividly painted shield which her great-grandfather, an eminent anthropologist, had brought back from New Guinea. She becomes obsessed with its past and determined to find out more about its strange tribal origins. 
Dreams begin to haunt her - dreams of another country, another clture, another time, and of shadowy people whom she feels are watching her. Who are they, and what do they want?

Abroad

A brilliantly funny original short story from Booker Prize winning author Penelope Lively. 
 
'Anyone artistic needed Abroad in the 1950s.' 
 
Paul and his girlfriend are artists in need of subject matter. Arresting, evocative subject matter. So they decide to go Abroad, as much as possible, for as long as possible. Because Abroad is full of well furnished scenery. Particularly peasants. Real, earthy, traditional peasants. Except you shouldn't really call them peasants should you? 'Country people'. Abroad is full of country people. 
 
In this funny, deftly written short story, Penelope Lively satirises an arty student of the 50s, a precursor of the gap year traveller, who hasn't learnt as much from her time Abroad as she likes to think . . . 
 
 
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.

'Anyone artistic needed Abroad in the 1950s.' 
 
Paul and his girlfriend are artists in need of subject matter. Arresting, evocative subject matter. So they decide to go Abroad, as much as possible, for as long as possible. Because Abroad is full of well furnished scenery. Particularly peasants. Real, earthy, traditional peasants. Except you shouldn't really call them peasants should you? 'Country people'. Abroad is full of country people. 
 
In this funny, deftly written short story, Penelope Lively satirises an arty student of the 50s, a precursor of the gap year traveller, who hasn't learnt as much from her time Abroad as she likes to think . . .

How It All Began

From Penelope Lively, winner of the Booker Prize 
 
When . . . Charlotte is mugged and breaks her hip, her daughter Rose cannot accompany her employer Lord Peters to Manchester, which means his niece Marion has to go instead, which means she sends a text to her lover which is intercepted by his wife, which is . . . just the beginning in the ensuing chain of life-altering events. 
 
In this engaging, utterly absorbing and brilliantly told novel, Penelope Lively shows us how one random event can cause marriages to fracture and heal themselves, opportunities to appear and disappear, lovers who might never have met to find each other and entire lives to become irrevocably changed. 
 
Funny, humane, touching, sly and sympathetic, How It All Began is a brilliant sleight of hand from an author at the top of her game. 
 
'Contains some of Lively's funniest and most enjoyable character studies . . . she remains a sublime storyteller'Guardian 
 
'Deeply comical, essentially kind-hearted, wonderfully written and seasoned with a rare wisdom' Literary Review 
 
'More stylish than many writers half her age . . . Lively knows a thing or two about storytelling . . . her candour is refreshing, and reminds us that you don't have to lie to yourself to live life finely until the very end' The Times

More stylish than many writers half her age . . . Lively knows a thing or two about storytelling . . . her candour is refreshing, and reminds us that you don't have to lie to yourself to live life finely until the very end

Contains some of Lively's funniest and most enjoyable character studies . . . she remains a sublime storyteller

Elegant and engrossing, this is a gently funny and touching portrait of the complex path life can take

Deeply comical, essentially kind-hearted, wonderfully written and seasoned with a rare wisdom

Lively's prose is indeed lively, her humour wry and her insights into the human condition both wise and moving

As always, Lively has a precise control of the comic, and an ear for dialogue honed over more than 40 years of writing

A deftly constructed, always enjoyable novel

Penelope Lively has written many prize-winning novels for adults and children. They include: The Road To Lichfield, According To Mark, Moon Tiger (which won the 1987 Booker Prize), Heat Wave, Spiderweb, The Photograph, Making It Up, Consequences and Family Album. Penelope Lively lives in London.

According to Mark

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Any time spent with Penelope Lively is a joy

Penelope Lively is a prolific, popular and critically acclaimed author of fiction for both children and adults. She has been shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize, winning once for Moon Tiger in 1987.

A respected literary biographer, Mark is working on the life of Gilbert Strong - a writer about whom he thinks he knows everything. Happily married, and apparently dedicated to a life of letters, he nevertheless falls in love with Strong's granddaughter Carrie, a vague and unsophisticated young woman more interested in bedding plants than books or passion. As Mark's obsessions develop over a hot, complicated summer, he begins to understand that nothing is ever what it seems; not Gilbert Strong, and certainly not himself. 
 
According to Mark is a witty and moving look at love, literature and the dangers of middle-aged folly.

Heat Wave

Published in Penguin Modern Classics, Penelope Lively's Heat Wave is a moving portrayal of a fragile family damaged and defined by adultery, and the lengths to which a mother will go to protect the ones she loves. 
 
Pauline is spending the summer at World's End, a cottage somewhere in the middle of England. This year the adjoining cottage is occupied by her daughter Teresa and baby grandson Luke; and, of course, Maurice, the man Teresa married. As the hot months unfold, Maurice grows ever more involved in the book he is writing - and with his female copy editor - and Pauline can only watch in dismay and anger as her daughter repeats her own mistakes in love. The heat and tension will lead to a violent, startling climax. 
 
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 Heat Wave, you might like Lively's Moon Tiger, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 
 
'Extraordinarily good, intelligent and perceptive ... very moving' 
Susan Hill, author of The Woman in Black 
 
'[Heat Wave is] short, but the emotions are so intense and the writing so good that it punches well above its weight' 
Independent

Extraordinarily good, intelligent and perceptive... very moving

Pauline is spending the summer at World's End, a cottage somewhere in the middle of England. This year the adjoining cottage is occupied by her daughter Teresa and baby grandson Luke; and, of course, Maurice, the man Teresa married. As the hot months unfold, Maurice grows ever more involved in the book he is writing - and with his female copy editor - and Pauline can only watch in dismay and anger as her daughter repeats her own mistakes in love. The heat and tension will lead to a violent, startling climax. 
 
In Heat Wave, Penelope Lively gives us a moving portrayal of a fragile family damaged and defined by adultery, and the lengths to which a mother will go to protect the ones she loves.

Family Album

Lively immediately plunges us into an entirely convincing world of bustling family life...exceptionally well observed and gloriously enjoyable...this should be rated as one of her most impressive works

One of those ridiculously simple, ridiculously readable novels whose artistry only becomes apparent when you put it down with a sign of regret, having devoured it in one sitting...Lively still displays an economy and an elegance that put younger writers to shame

Lively's brilliance is of the creeping kind. There is a sense of formality, which falls away as the novel gains pace and builds towards an unforeseen end. She is particularly good at bending language to make it fit her cool and clear voice...Lively succeeds brilliantly in getting a hold on the climate of family life. Slowly we absorb the details that get lost in the bluster and flurry until we are so drawn in, so tightly contained in the dynamics of this one, that the end, when it comes, is simply devastating

A pleasure to read, hugely enjoyable, consistently absorbing, hilarious

An involving emotional drama and an insightful examination of changing family values

The complexities and silences of family life are intelligently and subtly explored...a very engaging novel, continuously interesting and often moving

Sympathetic and observant, Lively moves fluidly between present-tense set-piece scenes and silent monologues, placing the novel's revelations where they will be most effective, and allowing implications - about marriage, feminism and personal ambition - to blossom slowly

Penelope Lively at her best, sharp-eyed but sympathetic, deftly steering the reader from one point of view to another. This novel should delight her regular readers and ensnare new ones

A very readable, well-paced novel peopled with Lively's customary immaculately observed and impeccably rounded characters

Lively skilfully mingles past and present, as she peels away the layers to uncover a family secret of which no one speaks...Lively's astute skewering of family relations reverberates in the mind long afterwards

Lively plays her sleight of hand with admirable dexterity. The dialogue is pitch-perfect, the writing crisp and the humour wonderfully dry

Gripping. An intelligent look at family relationships and the knock-on effects of past events on the present. It's an absorbing tale of mystery and intrigue that will leave you wondering what lies behind even the nicest façade

A deeply satisfying, eloquent family-fabric novel

Penelope Lively has written many prize-winning novels for adults and children. They include: The Road To Lichfield, According To Mark, Moon Tiger (which won the 1987 Booker Prize), Heat Wave, Spiderweb, The Photograph, Making It Up and Consequences. Penelope Lively lives in London.

A House Unlocked

A House Unlocked is Booker Prize winning author Penelope Lively's classic memoir. 
 
The only child of divorced parents, Penelope Lively was often sent to stay at her grandparents' country house Golsoncott. Years later, as the house was sold out of the family, she began to piece together the lives of those she knew fifty years before. 
 
In a needlework sampler, she sees her grandmother and the wartime children that she sheltered under her roof in 1940. Potted meat jars remind her of the ritual of doing the flowers for church. The smell of the harness room brings her Aunt Rachel - avant-garde artist, fervent horserider - vividly back to life. 
 
In A House Unlocked, Penelope Lively delves into the domestic past of her former home, and tells of her own youth and the contrasts between life today and the way they lived then. 
 
'Wonderful. Lively is brilliant and original . . . Every page of this book captures your attention' Daily Mail 
 
'Remarkable, richly enjoyable . . . a captivating memoir' Helen Dunmore, The Times 
 
'Engaging, curious, compelling, remarkable . . . Any time spent with Penelope Lively is a joy' Observer

Wonderful. Lively is brilliant and original . . . Every page of this book captures your attention

Remarkable, richly enjoyable ... a captivating memoir

Engaging, curious, compelling, remarkable ... Any time spent with Penelope Lively is a joy

An ingenious memoir. The enchantment lies in its personal narrative: the portrait of a family and its progress through the twentieth century

Penelope Lively has written many prize-winning novels for adults and children. They include: The Road To Lichfield, According To Mark, Moon Tiger (which won the 1987 Booker Prize), Heat Wave, Spiderweb, The Photograph, Making It Up, Consequences and Family Album. Penelope Lively lives in London.

The only child of divorced parents, Penelope Lively was often sent to stay at her grandparents' country house Golsoncott. Years later, as the house was sold out of the family, she began to piece together the lives of those she knew fifty years before. 
 
In a needlework sampler, she sees her grandmother and the wartime children that she sheltered under her roof in 1940. Potted meat jars remind her of the ritual of doing the flowers for church. The smell of the harness room brings her Aunt Rachel - avant-garde artist, fervent horserider - vividly back to life. 
 
In A House Unlocked, Penelope Lively delves into the domestic past of her former home, and tells of her own youth and the contrasts between life today and the way they lived then.

City of the Mind

City of the Mind is 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

The descriptions of the London Blitz are achingly real

Bold and beautiful, often witty, hopeful, enriching

'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.

Treasures of Time

Treasures of Time is the twelfth novel by Booker Prize winning author Penelope Lively, a spellbinding story of the dangers of digging up the dark secrets of the past. This edition features an introduction by Selina Hastings. 
 
Penguin Decades bring you the novels that helped shape modern Britain. When they were published, some were bestsellers, some were considered scandalous, and others were simply misunderstood. All represent their time and helped define their generation, while today each is considered a landmark work of storytelling. 
 
Penelope Lively's Treasures of Time was published in 1979, and is an acutely observed study of marriage and manipulation. When the BBC want to make a documentary about acclaimed archaeologist Hugh Paxton, his widow Laura, daughter Kate and her fiancé Tom are a little nervous: digging up the past can also disturb the present . . . 
 
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.

Penelope Lively was born in Cairo in 1933. Her childhood there is the subject of her memoir Oleander Jacaranda. At the age of 12 she was sent to boarding school in England, and subsequently read history at Oxford. She married the academic Jack Lively, who became Professor of Politics at the University of Warwick. She first began writing highly praised children's fiction, then published her first adult novel in 1977. Moon Tiger won the Booker Prize in 1987. She lives in north London.

Penguin Decades bring you the novels that helped shape modern Britain. When they were published, some were bestsellers, some were considered scandalous, and others were simply misunderstood. All represent their time and helped define their generation, while today each is considered a landmark work of storytelling. 
 
Penelope Lively's Treasures of Time was published in 1979, and is an acutely observed study of marriage and manipulation. When the BBC want to make a documentary about acclaimed archaeologist Hugh Paxton, his widow Laura, daughter Kate and her fiancé Tom are a little nervous: digging up the past can also disturb the present...

Consequences

A hugely satisfying and romantic novel, plotting the lives of three generations of twentieth-century women

A hugely satisfying and romantic novel, Consequences plots the lives of three generations of twentieth-century women. 
 
In 1935, privileged misfit Lorna meets the love of her life. Falling for a pennyless and bohemian artist, Matt, she abandons her stuffy Kensington existence in London and moves to a rustic cottage in Somerset. A baby, Molly, is born, but the coming war takes Matt - and Lorna's dreams - away. 
 
Lorna's decisions and their unforeseeable consequences come to shape the stories first of her daughter, Molly, and then her granddaughter, Ruth. 
 
Consequences tells of three generations of women in their own twentieth-century times united by their shared experiences of love, pain, fate and happiness . . . 
 
'A flawlessly constructed mini-epic that will delight' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Nourishing fare from a writer on sparkling form' Daily Mail

A flawlessly constructed mini-epic that will delight

Nourishing fare from a fine writer on sparkling form

Penelope Lively has written many prize-winning novels for adults and children. They include: The Road To Lichfield, According To Mark, Moon Tiger (which won the 1987 Booker Prize), Heat Wave, Spiderweb, The Photograph and Making It Up. Penelope Lively lives in London.

Destinies can change in an instant. 
 
In 1935, privileged misfit Lorna meets the love of her life. Falling for a pennyless and bohemian artist, Matt, she abandons her stuffy Kensington existence in London and moves to a rustic cottage in Somerset. A baby, Molly, is born, but the coming war takes Matt - and Lorna's dreams - away ... 
 
Lorna's decisions and their unforeseeable consequences come to shape the stories first of her daughter, Molly, and then her granddaughter, Ruth. 
 
Consequences tells of three generations of women in their own twentieth-century times united by their shared experiences of love, pain, fate and happiness ...

Making It Up

An intelligent examination of alternative destinies, choices and the moments in our lives when we could have chosen a different path, from Booker Prize-winning author Penelope Lively 
 
In this fascinating piece of fiction, Penelope Lively takes moments from her own life and asks 'what if' she had made other choices: what if she hadn't escaped from Alexandria at the outbreak of WWII? What would her life have been like if she had become pregnant when she was 18? If she had married someone else? If she taken a different job? If she had lived her life abroad? 
 
'[A] highly original form of fictional autobiography as well as a fascinating insight into the seemingly random nature of destiny' Daily Mail 
 
'[Lively's] writing has always tackled deep questions of identity, memory, love and loss . . . These elegant 'confabulations', as she calls them, allow Lively's talents full range. Intelligent, limpidly well-written and full of human understanding, they evoke the times she has seen and the richness of other lives as well as her own' Sunday Telegraph

Penelope Lively has written many prize-winning novels for adults and children. They include: The Road To Lichfield, According To Mark, Moon Tiger (which won the 1987 Booker Prize), Heat Wave, Spiderweb and The Photograph. Penelope Lively lives in London N1.

"Story-telling is an ingrained habit; I wouldn't know what else to do. But the mythology that is intriguing today is that of imagined alternatives. Somehow, choice and contingency have landed you where you are, as the person that you are, and the whole process seems so precarious that you look back at those climatic moments when things might have gone differently, when life might have spun off in some other direction, and wonder at this apparently arbitrary outcome" 
In this fascinating new piece of fiction, Penelope Lively takes moments from her own life and asks "what if" she had made other choices: what if she hadn't escaped from Alexandria at the outbreak of WWII? What would her life have been like if she had become pregnant when she was 18? If she had married someone else? If she taken a different job? If she had lived her life abroad? In this highly original work, Penelope Lively examines alternative destinies, choices and the moments in our lives when we could have chosen a different path....

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

Penelope Lively was born in Cairo in 1933. 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. 
 
 
Anthony Thwaite has published fourteen books of poems, including most recently A Move in the Weather (2003). He has taught in universities throughout the world, worked as a BBC radio producer, and is a former editor of The Listener and New Statesman. He is married to the biographer Ann Thwaite and in 1990 he received an OBE for services to poetry.

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.

A Childhood Perceived

Oleander, Jacaranda

First time in Modern Classics for Penelope Lively's evocative memoir of her childhood in Egypt.

So vividly evocative that you can smell the dust and dung, jacaranda and the oleander. It offers potent glimpses of British colonial life 50 years ago: the snake-charmer in the garden; the nine-year old Penelope spying on de Gaulle at Government House... The result is a wise, colourful and touching tale

Lively uses the imaginative power of a mature novelist to evoke the sounds, sights and smells of Cairo which is not so much 'another country as another century'

Penelope Lively was born in Cairo in 1933. 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, many of which are published by Penguin.

This autobiography is about growing up in Egypt. It is also an investigation into childhood perception in which the author uses herself and her memories as an insight into how children see and know. It is a look at Eygpt up to, and including, World War II from a small girl's point of view, which is also, ultimately, a moving and rather sad picture of an isolated and lonely little girl.

Beyond the Blue Mountains

Beyond the Blue Mountains is a collection of short stories by Booker Prize winning author Penelope Lively. 
 
The fourteen warmly humorous stories in Beyond the Blue Mountains range from the fantasy of Scheherazade to a dazzling example of chaos theory, depicting in exquisite prose the subtle but significant events that go to create everyday experience. 
 
'Penelope Lively at her most polished and perceptive' Sunday Times 
 
'Lively is a genius and this collection is a joy' Daily Mail

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, which was shortlisted for the 1989 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award; 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; and Family Album, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award. 
 
She has also written radio and television scripts and has acted as presenter for a BBC Radio 4 programme on children's literature. 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.

These fourteen warmly humorous stories range from the fantasy of Scheherazade to a dazzling example of chaos theory. For the most part, however, they depict in exquisite prose the subtle but significant events that go to create everyday experience.

Penelope Lively

Fascinating, lucid . . . Authority, yes; and wit, thoughtfulness, a tender attention to the natural world, an incisive but deeply humane imagination: Ammonites and Leaping Fish is full of all of these

Like old age itself this book is not for sissies. Luckily for us Lively is one of our most gifted writers . . . This is Lively at her best

A fascinating portrait not only of the author but of the times through which she has lived . . . sharp, unsentimental and ruefully funny

Lively's memoir about age and the pleasures and pains of seniority is informative, instructive, unexpected and beautifully observed

An elegant and thoughtful dissection of a subject few writers dare dwell on

Rich in observations and recollections. It should be read slowly because there is much to invite reflection

Other brilliant women writers (Joyce Carol Oates, Joan Didion . . .) have written whole volumes on widowhood, but Penelope Lively's description of that condition is all the more affecting by being sparse . . . Will delight all those who love Lively's novels . . . It's all enthralling: autobiography in miniature

A superb study of memory and of her own voyage into the ninth decade of her life . . . Lively is a compelling, vitally interested witness to time pas

Ammonites & Leaping Fish is powerfully consoling. Lively is certainly sagacious, her words careful and freighted. But there is girlishness here, too. Things still catch her eye, her attention. New books. Old stories. Another day for the taking

A Life in Time

'The twentieth century shook the world: it sobers me to have been one of those to see it through' 
 
In this powerful and compelling 'view from old age', Penelope Lively, at eighty, reports back on what she finds. There are meditations on what it is like to be old as well as on how memory shapes us. There are intriguing examinations of the key personal as well as historical moments she has lived through and her thoughts on her own bookishness - both as reader and writer. Lastly, she turns to six treasured possessions to speak eloquently about who she is and where she's been - fragments of memories from a life well lived. 
 
Ten years on, Lively returns to the same questions in a new chapter, On Being Ninety, included in this new edition.

Penelope Lively

Praise for Ammonites and Leaping Fish

Fascinating, lucid . . . Authority, yes; and wit, thoughtfulness, a tender attention to the natural world, an incisive but deeply humane imagination: Ammonites and Leaping Fish is full of all of these

Like old age itself this book is not for sissies. Luckily for us Lively is one of our most gifted writers . . . This is Lively at her best

A fascinating portrait not only of the author but of the times through which she has lived . . . sharp, unsentimental and ruefully funny

Fascinating, lucid . . . Authority, yes; and wit, thoughtfulness, a tender attention to the natural world, an incisive but deeply humane imagination: Ammonites and Leaping Fish is full of all of these

Like old age itself this book is not for sissies. Luckily for us Lively is one of our most gifted writers . . . This is Lively at her best

A fascinating portrait not only of the author but of the times through which she has lived . . . sharp, unsentimental and ruefully funny

Fascinating, lucid . . . Authority, yes; and wit, thoughtfulness, a tender attention to the natural world, an incisive but deeply humane imagination: Ammonites and Leaping Fish is full of all of these

Like old age itself this book is not for sissies. Luckily for us Lively is one of our most gifted writers . . . This is Lively at her best

A fascinating portrait not only of the author but of the times through which she has lived . . . sharp, unsentimental and ruefully funny

Books by Penelope Lively

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