Fiction

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2019
LONGLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2019
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2019

Not far from London, there is a village.

This village belongs to the people who live in it and to those who lived in it hundreds of years ago. It belongs to England’s mysterious past and its confounding present.

It belongs to Mad Pete, the grizzled artist. To ancient Peggy, gossiping at her gate. To families dead for generations, and to those who have only recently moved here.

But it also belongs to Dead Papa Toothwort who has woken from his slumber in the woods. Dead Papa Toothwort, who is listening to them all.

Chimerical, audacious, strange and wonderful – a song to difference and imagination, to friendship, youth and love, Lanny is the globally anticipated new novel from Max Porter.

Shalini will never forget her daughter Leila’s third birthday party: it was the last time she saw her alive.

Sixteen years have passed and Shalini’s life is unrecognizable. Her husband gone: beaten and dragged from their home the night Leila disappeared. Shalini, once privileged, is now disgraced. She trawls the streets desperate to discover where Leila now lives – if she lives at all.

In this repressive state, where tradition and purity are valued above all, those outside the city walls – forced to live in filth and oppressive heat – are less than nothing. But can Shalini find a way back in? Will she see Leila again?