Editions

The Passion

  • Imprint: Vintage

  • ISBN: 9780099598329

  • Length: 176  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 12mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 127g

  • RRP: £8.99

The Passion

'What you risk reveals what you value...'

The Passion is a fairy tale about survival and broken-heartedness, cruelty, obsession and madness.

Henri had a passion for Napoleon and Napoleon had a passion for chicken. From Boulogne to Moscow Henri butchered for his Emperor and never killed a single man.

Meanwhile, in Venice, the city of chance and disguises, Villanelle was born with the webbed feet of her boatman father - but in the casinos she gambled her heart and lost.

As the soldier-chef's love for Napoleon turns to hate he finds the Venetian beauty, and together they flee to the canals of darkness.

'It's a fantasy, a vivid dream... inventive and brilliant' Guardian

'As moving and funny as it is skilful, and reflects the author's formidable appetite for life' Sunday Times

'A book of great imaginative audacity and assurance...brilliantly physical (and funny) detail" Times Literary Supplement

'Its concentrated, beautifully detailed prose recalls the diction of fairy tales; its plot incorporates their magic, their shrewd wit and brutality...a deeply imagined and beautiful book, often arrestingly so' New York Times

**One of the BBC’s 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

  • Imprint: Vintage

  • ISBN: 9780099598329

  • Length: 176  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 12mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 127g

  • RRP: £8.99

Reviews

  • "It's a fantasy, a vivid dream... inventive and brilliant"

    Guardian

  • "As moving and funny as it is skilful, and reflects the author's formidable appetite for life"

    Sunday Times

  • "A book of great imaginative audacity and assurance...brilliantly physical (and funny) detail"

    Times Literary Supplement

  • "Its concentrated, beautifully detailed prose recalls the diction of fairy tales; its plot incorporates their magic, their shrewd wit and brutality...a deeply imagined and beautiful book, often arrestingly so"

    New York Times

  • "Lyrical prose penetrates to the heart of things... She knows how to speak plain truth and at the same time satisfy our longing for the fabulous. She's telling you stories. Trust her"

    Washington Post

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About the Author

Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson OBE was born in Manchester. Adopted by Pentecostal parents she was raised to be a missionary. This did and didn’t work out. Discovering early the power of books she left home at 16 to live in a Mini and get on with her education. After graduating from Oxford University she worked for a while in the theatre and published her first novel at 25. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is based on her own upbringing but using herself as a fictional character. She scripted the novel into a BAFTA-winning BBC drama. 27 years later she re-visited that material in the bestselling memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? She has written 10 novels for adults, as well as children’s books, non-fiction and screenplays. She writes regularly for the Guardian. She lives in the Cotswolds in a wood and in Spitalfields, London. She believes that art is for everyone and it is her mission to prove it.

Jeanette Winterson

Related articles

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Features

Read women in 2019: VINTAGE classic and new female authors

Join us at VINTAGE in a year of challenging ourselves to listen, hear and respond to some of the greatest female writers history has to offer. From Margaret Atwood to Mary Wollstonecraft, revisit your favourites, discover new voices and fill your bookshelf and your year with women’s voices. They matter.
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Extracts

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson OBE was born in Manchester. Adopted by Pentecostal parents she was raised to be a missionary. This did and didn’t work out. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is based on her own upbringing but using herself as a fictional character. Read an extract of the novel below
/content/dam/prh/articles/archive/vintage-podcast-logo.jpg

Podcasts

Hogarth Shakespeare with Jeanette Winterson and Howard Jacobson

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