Close Quarters

<b>Lose </b><b>yourself in an epic naval journey in the second novel in the Booker Prize-winning <i>Sea Trilogy </i>by </b><b>the author of <i>Lord of the Flies.</i></b><br><b><i></i></b><br><b><i>This tropical nowhere was the whole world - the whole </i>imaginable <i>world.</i></b><br><br>A decrepit warship is becalmed halfway to Australia, stilled in an ocean wilderness of heat and sea mists. In this surreal, fête-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 . . .<br><b></b><br><b>'No living writer has represented the fragility of man's experience so marvellously as Golding.' AS Byatt</b><br><br><b>'It is in Golding's magnificent, therapeutic, terrifying descriptions of seascapes that the deepest meanings can be found.' Kate Mosse</b><br><b></b><b></b><br><b>'Stunning . . . As exciting as any thriller.' <i>Sunday Times</i></b><br><b></b><br><b>'A feat of imaginative reconstruction, as vivid as a dream.' <i>Daily Mail</i></b><br><b><i></i></b><br><b>'Tells an utterly absorbing tale, in language of immense force and subtlety.' </b><i><b>Financial Times</b></i><br><br><b><i>To The Ends of the Earth: A Sea Trilogy</i> - Book Two</b>