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Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban
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Turtle Diary

Penguin Modern Classics
Due to publisher restrictions, this audiobook is unavailable for purchase in your selected country.
Length 5 hours 47 minutes
Language English
Narrators Harry Myers & Lucy Paterson

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Brought to you by Penguin.

Born to swim thousands of miles in the ocean, the giant sea turtles are now trapped in a tank of golden-green water at London Zoo. But not for much longer. Two lonely people, a bookseller and a children's illustrator, have begun thinking turtle thoughts. As they come together to hatch a plan to release the turtles into the sea, their diaries reveal how they find their own lives changing in imperceptible and quite unintended ways.

'Wonderful, life-saving ... places Russell Hoban among the greatest, timeless novelists' The Times

'Crackles with witty detail, mordant intelligence and self-deprecating irony' Time

'This lovely human fable seems to me one of the best things of its kind - a fine and touching achievement' John Fowles

ยฉ Russell Hoban 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

On his death in 2011, The Times described Russell Hoban as 'perhaps the most consistently strange writer of the late 20th century'. He thought and wrote in an extraordinary range of genres, becoming first a bestselling writer of children's books, particularly the immortal Frances stories and his first novel, The Mouse and His Child (1968). After its publication he continued to write for children (most notably perhaps the Captain Najork books with Quentin Blake and The Marzipan Pig), but focussed most of his energies on a sequence of wonderful novels, which began with The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz (1973) and ended with Angelica Lost and Found (2010). He also wrote the libretto for Harrison Birtwistle's opera The Second Mrs Kong (1994).

His novels were wildly various, but share his obsession with objects, animals, specific works of art and pieces of music, his love of words and sense of humour. Penguin Modern Classics publishes his first eight novels: The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, Kleinzeit, Turtle Diary, Riddley Walker, Pilgermann, The Medusa Frequency, Fremder and Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer.

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Limited-time offer

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Reviews

Russell Hoban is our Ur-novelist, a maverick voice that is like no other. Worth rejoicing in ... a banquet of whimsical delights. Each Russell Hoban book is surprising ... but you also know what you're getting, which is curiosity, wonder and a world-encompassing empathy. This wonderful, life-saving fantasy places Russell Hoban where he has got to be - among the greatest, timeless novelists. Crackles with witty detail, mordant intelligence and self-deprecating irony. [Turtle Diary] has medicinal qualities. I only need to think about it and I'm in a better mood. A story about the recovery of life ... Like other cult writers - Salinger for instance, or Vonnegut - Hoban writes about ordinary people making life-affirming gestures in a world that threatens to dissolve in madness. This lovely human fable seems to me one of the best things of its kind - a fine and touching achievement. Tragicomic pleasure ... Metaphysical speculation undercut by dry humour is the signature style of Russell Hoban. Expand reviews
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