Close Quarters

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

To The Ends of the Earth: A Sea Trilogy - Book Two