Vendor
	Liepman Literary Agency Marc Koralnik
Original language
English

ARCHIPELAGO

Monique Roffey

Monique Roffey, vibrant new voice in Caribbean fiction and author of the Orange Prize finalist THE WHITE WOMAN ON THE GREEN BICYCLE, returns with ARCHIPELAGO, a new novel that is a journey of redemption, healing, and hope in the wake of devastating loss.

Gavin Weald, his five-year old daughter Océan and their dog Suzy are living in their newly rebuilt house, only a few months since a devastating flood swept through their Caribbean home, with heartbreaking consequences.

But their lives are not so easy to rebuild. Gavin is trying desperately to carry on, but wakes each night to his daughter's cries and his own fears for the future. Till one morning he takes his daughter and his dog down to the marina, to his old boat Romany which hasn't been on the sea in years, and embarks upon a voyage to make his peace with the waters. They set sail into deep open ocean, watch fish and dolphins leap from the waves, and head for the Caribbean archipelago that Gavin longed to explore as a younger man, before family life meant he moored his boat for what he thought was the last time.

Now Gavin and his unlikely crew are about to discover the full power and majesty of the sea. A miraculous journey awaits, new sights and wonders but it will take more than an ocean to put the memory of the flood behind them ...

Monique spent her childhood in Trinidad, Papua New Guinea and Australia. She worked as a journalist, and for The British Council, Amnesty International, and was the Centre Director for the Arvon Foundation. Monique has an MA in creative writing from Lancaster, and was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Sussex and Chichester Universities.

Winner: OCM Bocas Prize 2013; Shortlisted: Costa Book Awards 2014; Orion Book Awards 2014; Encore Prize 2011; Orange Prize 2010

Available products
Book Published 2023-05-11 by Simon & Schuster

Comments

"Engrossing . . . ARCHIPELAGO washes over the reader's imagination with the force of a tidal wave as its protagonists embark on a perilous journey along the Caribbean Sea. The novel shows what remains in the heart when we have lost what we love, and the inner resources needed to rebuild a life from its ruins."

"ARCHIPELAGO is lovely: a novel full of sensual, elemental description, soaked in loss and damage and softly haunted by the Caribbean's bloody history of slavery."

Penguin

"There's a warmth to it, an exuberance and a wisdom. It's funny, and sometimes bitingly poignant. Monique Roffey writes the male central character so well, and as for the little girl at the centre of the story, it's one of the most vivid and charming portraits of a young child I can remember reading in years. A brilliant piece of storytelling." - Andrew Miller, author of PURE, winner of the Costa Book of the Year 2011

"One to place on the shelf next to Moby Dick A masterful writer."

"Arresting . . . Strikingly vivid . . . ARCHIPELAGO beautifully evokes the pared-back rawness of being adrift, at the mercy of nature, first by accident and then by design."