6 Books set on Distant Shores
Over the years, the Women’s Prize for Fiction has travelled across continents, with incredible writers hailing from every corner of...
The Lacuna is the heartbreaking story of a man torn between the warm heart of Mexico and the cold embrace of 1950s America in the shadow of Senator McCarthy. Born in America and raised in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is a liability to his social-climbing flapper mother, Salome. When he starts work in the household of Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo – where the Bolshevik leader, Lev Trotsky, is also being harboured as a political exile – he inadvertently casts his lot with art, communism and revolution. A compulsive diarist, he records and relates his colourful experiences of life with Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Trotsky in the midst of the Mexican revolution. A violent upheaval sends him back to America; but political winds continue to throw him between north and south, in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach – the lacuna – between truth and public presumption.
"The research and writing were simultaneous, almost to the end. I kept discovering fascinating and horrifying events buried in the historical record that made my heart race, and pushed me on toward my final conclusions."
Monique Roffey
Lorrie Moore
Hilary Mantel
Attica Locke
Barbara Kingsolver
Rosie Alison
Sarah Waters
Kathryn Stockett
Amy Sackville
Monique Roffey
Lorrie Moore
Nadifa Mohamed
Hilary Mantel
Maria McCann
Attica Locke
Andrea Levy
Laila Lalami
Barbara Kingsolver
Sadie Jones
M.J. Hyland
Rebecca Gowers
Roopa Farooki
Amanda Craig
Clare Clark
Eleanor Catton
Rosie Alison
Barbara Kingsolver
Ruth Ozeki
Susanna Clarke
Maggie O'Farrell
Tayari Jones
Kamila Shamsie
Naomi Alderman
Lisa McInerney
Ali Smith
Eimear McBride
A.M. Homes
Madeline Miller
Téa Obreht
Barbara Kingsolver
Marilynne Robinson
Rose Tremain
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Lionel Shriver
Andrea Levy
Valerie Martin
Ann Patchett
Kate Grenville
Linda Grant
Suzanne Berne
Carol Shields
Anne Michaels
Helen Dunmore
Over the years, the Women’s Prize for Fiction has travelled across continents, with incredible writers hailing from every corner of...
We asked and you answered! In May we launched a vote to curate a list of ten essential books for...
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