Close Quarters

Introduced by Helen Castor, lose yourself in an epic naval journey in the second novel in the Booker Prize-winning historical fiction Sea Trilogy by the author of Lord of the Flies.

This tropical nowhere was the whole world – the whole imaginable world.

A decrepit warship is becalmed halfway to Australia, stilled in an ocean wilderness of heat and sea mists. In this surreal, fête-like atmosphere, a ball is held with a passing ship: the passengers dance and flirt, while beneath them seaweed like green hair spreads omniously over the hull. Half-mad with fear, drink, love and opium, both vessel and passengers feel themselves going to pieces: and the very planks seem to twist themselves alive as the ship comes apart at the seams . . .

‘Fantastic … Gems tumble off the pages … A strong sense of drama … Much of the pleasure of reading his work is his original imagery.’ Annie Proulx

‘No living writer has represented the fragility of man’s experience so marvellously as Golding.’ AS Byatt

‘It is in Golding’s magnificent, therapeutic, terrifying descriptions of seascapes that the deepest meanings can be found.’ Kate Mosse

‘Stunning . . . As exciting as any thriller.’ Sunday Times

‘A feat of imaginative reconstruction, as vivid as a dream.’ Daily Mail

‘Tells an utterly absorbing tale, in language of immense force and subtlety.’ Financial Times

To The Ends of the Earth: A Sea Trilogy – Book Two