Editions

The Porpoise

  • Imprint: Vintage

  • ISBN: 9781529110708

  • Length: 336  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 237g

  • RRP: £8.99

The Porpoise

‘Just downright brilliant... a transcendent, transporting experience’ Observer

A motherless girl grows up in isolated luxury, hidden from the world by her wealthy father. She believes their life together is normal – but as time passes, she has a growing sense that something between them is very wrong.

She cannot escape, so she seeks solace in her books. Her favourite tales are those that conjure ancient worlds – of angry gods and heroic mortals, one of whom will some day come to her rescue.

Soon, she will forget where the page ends and her mind begins.

‘A full-throttle blast of storytelling mastery’ Max Porter

  • Imprint: Vintage

  • ISBN: 9781529110708

  • Length: 336  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 237g

  • RRP: £8.99

Reviews

  • Wondrous... a violent, all-action thrill ride shuttling between antiquity and the present... just downright brilliant... a transcendant, transporting experience... A helix, a mirror ball, a literary box of tricks… take your pick: this is a full-spectrum pleasure, mixing metafictional razzmatazz with pulse-racing action and a prose style to die for. I’ll be staggered if it’s not spoken of whenever prizes are mentioned this year

    Anthony Cummins, Observer

  • A beautifully rendered retelling…[and] a gripping novel that, despite its rollicking plot, never feels relentless, and is often very affecting indeed

    Jon Day, Financial Times

  • The extraordinary force and vividness of Haddon's prose ensure that The Porpoise reads [...] as a continually unfolding demonstration of the transporting power of stories... This is language that knows how to do things: sail a ship, make a gold buckle, negotiate the tides of the Thames. It's a stunningly effective combination of the quotidian and the mythic that pins impossibility to the page

    Justine Jordan, Guardian

  • Compelling, satisfying and moving... Haddon's writing is exquisite, balancing simple storytelling with searing insight

    Paul Connolly, Metro

  • The Porpoise is terrifically violent, with a bright, innocent ferocity … Haddon wants to restore agency to the female characters sidelined by the Antiochus legend. This could feel like a condescending attempt to end up on the right of history, but doesn’t

    Katy Waldman, The New Yorker

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About the Author

Mark Haddon

Mark Haddon is a writer and artist. His bestselling novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, was published simultaneously by Jonathan Cape and David Fickling in 2003. It won seventeen literary prizes, including the Whitbread Award. In 2012, a stage adaptation by Simon Stephens was produced by the National Theatre and went on to win 7 Olivier Awards in 2013 and the 2015 Tony Award for Best Play. In 2005 his poetry collection, The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea, was published by Picador, and his play, Polar Bears, was produced by the Donmar Warehouse in 2010. His most recent novel, The Red House, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2012. The Pier Falls, a collection of short stories, was also published by Cape in 2016. To commemorate the centenary of the Hogarth Press he wrote and illustrated a short story that appeared alongside Virginia Woolf's first story for the press in Two Stories (Hogarth, 2017).

Mark Haddon

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Michael Morpurgo talks to Katy Brand about his retelling of Raymond Briggs' classic, The Snowman
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Mark Haddon with Katy Brand on the Penguin Podcast

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