Close Quarters

Lose yourself in an epic naval journey in the second novel in the Booker Prize-winning 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, fete-like atmosphere, a ball is held with a passing ship: the passengers dance and flirt, while beneath them seaweed like green hair spreads omniously 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 . . .