A stage adaptation of the 1987 Booker Prize-winning novel, with an introduction by original author Penelope Lively
Claudia Hampton is a popular historian, a strong, beautiful and difficult woman. Now in her seventies, she is plotting her greatest work – a history of the world. She looks back over her life growing up between the wars and remembers the people who have shared its triumphs and tragedies. There is Gordon, her adored brother; Jasper, the charming, untrustworthy lover and father of her daughter, and Tom, her one great love, both found and lost during the El Alamein campaign when she worked as a war correspondent.
Against a background of world events, Claudia’s own remarkable story provokes a sharp combination of sadness, shock and amusement. Simon Reade’s adaptation is introduced by Penelope Lively herself.
Compelling, moving and eloquent, one of the great novels of the 20th century is brought to the stage for the first time. Winner of the 1987 Booker Prize, Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger is a haunting story of loss and desire.
"Reade’s adaptation is undoubtedly faithful to the book." - Daily Express
"A moving, thought provoking play which sends you home questioning. Moon Tiger is a worthy addition to theatre history." - Gloucestershire Echo
"An excellent adaptation that offers an evocative portrayal of one woman’s life remembrances." – Everything Theatre
"What hits one within minutes of the play opening is the beauty of the language, the clever use of words that make for gentle humour and how often the play nudges us in the direction of remembering our own history." - Bath Chronicle
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Library Journal
Lively recently won Britain's prestigious Booker Prize for this deeply moving, elegantly structured novel. The heroine is Claudia Hampton, an unconventional historian and former war correspondent who lies in a hospital bed dying of cancer. Forced inward, Claudia moves randomly across time and place to reconstruct the strata of her life. But ``most lives have their core, their kernel, the vital centre''; Claudia's is the brief, tragic encounter she had in Egypt during the war with Tom Southern, a British tank officer on leave from battle. Tom's voice, along with those of her brother and daughter, joins Claudia's to shape a narrative that is a complex, intricately composed fugue. This haunting evocation of loss is Lively's finest achievement yet.Laurence Hull, Cannon Memorial Lib., Concord, N.C.
Boston Globe
"A powerful, moving and beautifully wrought novel about the ways in which lives are molded by personal memory and the collective past."
New York Times Book Review
"It pulls us in; it engages us and saddens us. It is also unexpectedly funny.... It leaves its traces in the air long after you've put it away."
Publishers Weekly
Winner of the coveted Booker Prize, Moon Tiger is "a novel of exceptional intelligence and depth, by one of England's finest writers."
Telegraph The London Sunday
"Emotionally, Moon Tiger is kaleidoscopic, deeply satisfaying. The all too brief encountere between Claudia and Tom will s urely rate as one of hte most memorable of contemporary fictional affairs. This is one of the best novels I have ready for years."
