Penelope Lively

Claudia Hampton is dying but hasn’t said her last words yet. She spent her childhood in pre-war Britain; later, she worked as a war correspondent in Cairo and made a name for herself in the male-dominated field of history. During the Second World War, she found and lost her true love, had a brother she adored, a lover she could not trust, and gave birth to a daughter she could not love. Now she lies in a hospital bed, writing in her mind’s eye “the history of the world, and with it, her own.” She is a ruthless critic of everything and everyone, but as a professional historian, she gives voice to the other people involved who are shaping her life story with her.

Published by Host, 2019

Penelope Lively (* 1933) is a British author of novels for children and adults. She has won numerous awards, including the Carnegie Medal for Writing for children’s literature, and has twice been nominated for the Booker Prize. She finally won the prize in 1987 for her novel Moon Tiger, which was also shortlisted for the prestigious Golden Man Booker Prize for the best novel of the 1980s. Her novel Heat Wave and the fictionalised essay Life in the Garden were also published in Czech in 2001 and 2019, respectively.