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  • Published: 1 February 2005
  • ISBN: 9780099466185
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $26.99

The High Flyer




'The Vision of Elena Silves was almost too precociously good. The High Flyer rolls back the doors of the Shakespearian bunker to reveal the arsenal within. It's a very good novel' - William Boyd

Thomas Wavery is the new Consul General at Abyla on the tip of North Africa. A career diplomat, Wavery was once a high flyer, but an affair with a younger woman has dashed his dreams of ambassadorship. He arrives in Abyla with his wife suing for divorce, his passport stolen by a Gibraltarian ape and precious little enthusiasm for the task ahead. His one hope of redemption is a visit from his new love.

  • Published: 1 February 2005
  • ISBN: 9780099466185
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $26.99

About the author

Nicholas Shakespeare

Nicholas Shakespeare was born in 1957. The son of a diplomat, much of his youth was spent in the Far East and South America. His novels have been translated into twenty languages. They include The Vision Of Elena Silves, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, Snowleg and The Dancer Upstairs, which was chosen by the American Libraries Association in 1997 as the year's best novel, and in 2001 was made into a film of the same name by John Malkovich. Recent books include Secrets of the Sea and Priscilla. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is married with two sons and divides his time between Oxford and Tasmania.

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Praise for The High Flyer

He tells a story like an angel... Wonderful

Observer

A deeply satisfying book. I feel quite exceptionally inclined to read it all over again

Rosemary Stoyle, Literary Review

Shakespeare has completed a richly detailed, remarkably complete imaginary world

The Times

His lyricism is all his own and he raises his lovers to a plateau of passion where Greene never ventured

Sunday Telegraph

Wavery's story has a lyric simplicity and an emotional subtlety that are moving, involving and beautifully observed

Independent