Penelope Lively - Moon Tiger

Harriett Gilbert talks to acclaimed British writer Penelope Lively about her Booker Prize winning novel Moon Tiger.

A haunting tale of loss, loneliness and secret desires Moon Tiger is the kaleidoscopic story of maverick historian Claudia Hampton.

Telling nurses on her death bed that she will write a "history of the world and in the process my own," she charts her intensely-lived life from her childhood in England after World War I to the war-torn desert plains of Egypt, 30 years later – and beyond.

Egocentric and condescending as well as vulnerable and gutsy, Claudia is a complex heroine for our times who lingers in the mind long after you put the book down.

(Image: Penelope Lively. Copyright: Penguin)