'A gripping, sinister fable' Margaret Atwood (via Twitter) 'An extraordinary debut. Otherworldly, luminous, precise... She is writing the way that Sofia Coppola would shoot the end of the world' Guardian 'Bold, inventive, haunting... With shades of Margaret Atwood and Eimear McBride, you'll be bowled over by it' Stylist You are a girl. Your body is vulnerable. Men will break it if they can - and out there, they absolutely can. Suffering will prepare you for the worst. The cure is nothing compared to what you've been spared in the sickness. It takes a lot of love to hurt you like this. Now, come outside. It's time to play the drowning game. Imagine three sisters raised on an island, taught to fear the outside world and its men. And imagine the men who come to find them: three strangers washed up by the sea, bringing desire and destruction in their wake... 'Eerie, electric, beautiful . It rushes you through to the end on a tide of tension and closely held panic. I loved this book' Daisy Johnson, Man Booker-shortlisted author of Everything Under 'Otherworldly, brutal and poetic: a feminist fable set by the sea, a female Lord of the Flies . It felt like a book I'd been waiting to read for a long time' Emma Jane Unsworth, author of Animals

Autorentext
Sophie Mackintosh is the author of four novels, including The Water Cure and Cursed Bread. She has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Women's Prize, has won a Betty Trask Award, and has been selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. She has been published in Granta, The White Review **and TANK magazine **among others. Her new novel, Permanence, will be published in April 2026.

Klappentext

Sophie Mackintosh is the author of The Water Cure, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018. She also won the 2016 White Review Short Story Prize and the 2016 Virago/Stylist Short Story competition, and has been published in Granta and TANK magazine **among others. Her second novel, Blue Ticket, which will be published by Hamish Hamilton in Spring 2020.

Zusammenfassung

BRITISH VOGUE **'STAR OF THE FUTURE'
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INDEPENDENT **BEST BOOKS OF THE DECADE
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'A gripping, sinister fable' Margaret Atwood (via Twitter)

'An extraordinary debut - otherworldly, luminous, precise' Guardian

'Bold, inventive, haunting... With shades of Margaret Atwood and Eimear McBride, you'll be bowled over by it' Stylist

Grace, Lia and Sky live in an abandoned hotel, on a sun-bleached island, beside a poisoned sea. Their parents raised them there to keep them safe, to make them good. The world beyond the water is contaminated and men are the contamination. But one day three strangers wash ashore - men who stare at the sisters hungrily, helplessly. Men who bring trouble.

This ebook edition includes an exclusive extract from Sophie Mackintosh's gripping second novel, Blue Ticket, which is out now.

'A feminist fable set by the sea, a female Lord of the Flies. It felt like a book I'd been waiting to read for a long time' Emma Jane Unsworth

'Visceral, hypnotic, with one of my favourite endings I've read in a long while' The Pool

'An unsettling dark fantasy... [It] lingers long after the final page' Daily Telegraph