ARCHIPELAGO by Monique Roffey, US: Penguin
Monique Roffey’s acclaimed novel ARCHIPELAGO has been selected as one of four finalists in the 2014 Orion Book Awards. This award is given annually to books published in North America that address the human relationship with the natural world in a fresh, thought-provoking, and engaging manner. Other fiction finalists are Margaret Atwood, Abby Geni and Rick Bass.
Orion Magazine will announce the winner in the second week of May. Previous shortlisters include Karen Russell, Barbara Kingsolver, Robert MacFarlane and Helon Habila and the most recent winner was APOCALYPTIC PLANET by Craig Childs. More on the award can be seen here.
ARCHIPELAGO won the 2013 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Jamaican author Olive Senior, chair of the judging committee, spoke of ARCHIPELAGO as containing ‘an exploration of the greater Caribbean space in which is embedded a real-life story of trauma, loss and ultimately redemption that is both contemporary and uplifting.'
Roffey’s hauntingly beautiful novel follows the psychological and geographical journey of a man, his daughter and their dog as they flee the destruction of their home and take to ‘the green and turquoise leopard print sea.’
ARCHIPELAGO was published in the US by Penguin and in the UK by Simon and Schuster. Brazilian, Czech and Slovak, Portuguese and Norwegian rights have been sold. Roffey’s new novel HOUSE OF ASHES will be published in the UK by Simon and Schuster in July 2014.
See more about Monique Roffey here.
Praise for Monique Roffey:
‘One to place on the shelf next to Moby Dick … A masterful writer.’ – Publisher’s Weekly
‘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.’
—Maria Crawford, Financial Times
‘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.” —Anita Sethi, The Independent
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.’ —Claire Allfree, Metro