Virginia Woolf in Manhattan. Maggie Gee
p>Maggie Gee has written 15 books to great acclaim, and her work has been translated into 14 languages. In 2012 there was an international conference about her work at St Andrew’s University. One of Granta’s original ‘Best of Young British Novelists’, she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has been shortlisted for global prizes including the Orange (now Women’s) Prize, and the Dublin International IMPAC Prize. She writes novels, short stories, memoir, poetry and journalism. She is a Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, a Director of the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society and a Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature. Maggie Gee was awarded an OBE for services to literature in 2012.
Praise for Virginia Woolf in Manhattan
‘Hang on to your hats, it’s a joy’
Jane Gardam
‘Wickedly smart, funny and fearless, plus that rarest of all things, genuinely surprising’
Patrick Ness
‘Maggie Gee’s enchanting Virginia Woolf in Manhattan reimagines Woolf as a timeless, global inspiration for women’
Elaine Showalter
‘This giddily playful novel is a cunning what if … A gloriously funny, fleet-footed novel’
Metro Best Summer Reads
‘A witty book … It’s got everything in a novel that I really like’
Jacqueline Wilson’s Six Best Books, Daily Express
‘Audacious, playful and dazzlingly written’
Glasgow Herald
‘Maggie Gee has pulled off a remarkable feat … Her light touch and impeccable craft ensure invention comes hand in hand with readability. Gee’s strength as a writer is to allow the fantastical and plausible to coexist. [She] has made Woolf abundantly human once more in this exhilarating novel, with its passages of lyrical beauty that celebrate our material existence, and its passionate defence of imaginative writing’
Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain Bulletin
Praise for Maggie Gee’s writing
‘A wise and beautiful book about what it feels like to be alive’
Zadie Smith
‘Worldly, witty, enjoyable, impressive’
Doris Lessing
‘Fast-moving, energetic, constantly surprising’
Hilary Mantel
‘Maggie Gee has never written better’
Rose Tremain
‘Excellent. Exciting stuff’
Fay Weldon
‘A tour de force - brilliantly structured, surprising, humane, and suspenseful’
Elaine Showalter
‘Brilliant, just brilliant; deserves to be published in every language’
Hillary Jordan
‘Gripping, original and highly entertaining - Maggie Gee at her superb best’
J G Ballard
‘So rich it is almost aromatic; an impressive and important novel’
Nigella Lawson
‘Outstanding: tender, sexy and alarming’
Jim Crace
‘Wickedly funny contains lines that sparkle’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Up there with Orwell and Huxley’
Jeremy Paxman, BBC
‘Maggie Gee is one of our most ambitious and challenging novelists’
Sunday Times
‘Dazzling, alternately lyrical and austere, unbearably touching’
Observer
‘For all its passion and intricacy, it is also a very funny book: rewarding, carefully written, using language echoing the water that ebbs and flows, and eventually floods the pages’
TLS
‘Sublimely funny and infinitely subtle, pure delight’
Daily Telegraph
‘Energetic and beguiling’
Sunday Telegraph
‘A fantastic book’
Mariella Frostrup, BBC
‘She writes elegantly, unsentimentally, expertly’
Independent
‘This beautifully observed, intelligent and moving novel is one of those rare things - a small, carefully wrapped surprise that gets better and better with the unravelling’
Scotsman
‘A moving, funny, engrossing book’
Observer
‘A rattling good, page-turning yarn’
George Melly
‘Mordantly witty, unsparing, politically savvy, a beautifully clear and bracing vision’
TLS
‘One of the year’s finest novels’
Literary Review
‘Compulsively readable’
Guardian
‘Astonishing … beautifully written’
Big Issue
‘A transcendent work’
Daily Telegraph
‘Intensely touching’
Financial Times
‘Maggie Gee is superb. Elegant, humorous and surprising, this is a classy performance’
The Times
‘A moving, funny, engrossing book’
Observer
‘A remarkable and ambitious book, a tribute to Maggie Gee’s imaginative power’
Literary Review
‘The most exhilarating novel I’ve read all year’
Scotland on Sunday
‘Maggie Gee’s immense talent catches passion on the wing … a romance of a truth and depth that’s never without humour’
Mail on Sunday
Virginia Woolf
in Manhattan
MAGGIE GEE
Fentum Press, London
Sold and distributed by Global Book Sales/Macmillan Distribution and in North America by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, Inc.
part of the Ingram Content Group.
US edition copyright © 2019 Maggie Gee
Maggie Gee asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN (paperback) 978-1-909572-10-2
An earlier version of this novel was published by Telegram Books, London, 2014.
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