Moon Tiger

Moon Tiger

Summary

Penelope Lively's Booker Prize winning classic, Moon Tiger is a haunting story of loss and desire, published here as a Penguin Essential for the first time.

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.

'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

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

Reviews

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

About the author

Penelope Lively

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.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more