AHAB'S WIFE
or, The Star-Gazer
Sena Jeter Naslund
£7.99
'Possesses the reader like an unholy fever'
Pico Iyer, Time
'A stirring, eloquent novel with a zesty lust for life ... Crammed with travel, childbirth and rearing, unorthodox liaisons and a rigorous engagement with the scientific, cultural, religious and moral issues of the day.'
James Urquhart, The Times
Inspired by a brief passage in Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Sena Jeter Naslund has created a vast, compelling saga of a woman whose life is dominated by the ocean. As a child, Una Spenser is sent away from her family to live in a lighthouse but the unknown beckons and she runs away to sea disguised as a cabin boy. She encounters disasters, adventure, loss, murder and madness before her marriage to Ahab, whom we see through Una's eyes before the white whale takes his leg and he descends into a nightmare world of obsession and insanity. Vibrant, uplifting and enchanting, Ahab's Wife is destined to become a classic.
Sena Jeter Naslund
is Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Louisville and is on the MFA faculty of Vermont College. Her fiction has appeared in a number of journals and she has published four books: Ice Skating at the North Pole (1989); The Animal Way to Love (1993); Sherlock in Love (1993); and The Disobedience of Water (1999). She currently lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with her husband, John C Morrison, an atomic physicist, and her daughter, Flora.