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 ominously 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 . . .

Praise for Close Quarters

'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