Mr Fortune's Maggot
  • Published: 1 June 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241476093
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 160
  • RRP: $22.99

Mr Fortune's Maggot

Formats & editions
Paperback
1 Jun 2021
EBook
28 Jan 2021
Buy from…
Amazon Booktopia Dymocks QBD Readings Your Bookstore Abbeys Boomerang Find local retailers Find local retailers Collins Fishpond Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Mighty Ape

One of Sylvia Townsend Warner's best-loved novels: a droll and deeply affecting story of love and disillusionment on an remote tropical island

After three years on the remote tropical island of Fanua, Timothy Fortune, a missionary from London, has made little headway. The islanders show very little interest in Christianity and he has only a single convert: a boy, Lueli. As Mr Fortune's affections for both Lueli and his new island home deepen, he begins to question all his old certainties - until one day he is put to a terrible test.

A wry exploration of faith, colonialism and the demands of love, Mr Fortune's Maggot is as quietly subversive as it is delightful.
  • Published: 1 June 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241476093
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 160
  • RRP: $22.99
Categories:

About the author

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Related TitlesBlack Snow 1860466397The Heart of a Dog 1860466400A Country Doctor's Notebook 1860461654The White Guard 1860462189

Also by Sylvia Townsend Warner

The Flint Anchor
After the Death of Don Juan
The True Heart
The Corner That Held Them
Lolly Willowes
Summer Will Show
See all

Praise for Mr Fortune's Maggot

At long last I pulled down from its place on the shelves Sylvia Townsend Warner's plump little novel impishly titled Mr. Fortune's Maggot and was once again amazed by what a witty, poetic, clairvoyant writer this English woman was

John Updike

Mr. Fortune's Maggot is satire at its best. There are passages here - particularly those delightfully malicious ones, of which there are many - that still cause the reader to laugh out loud. There is so much truth here

Anthony Slide

Sylvia Townsend Warner pursues the psychology of the story with beautiful accuracy

John Carey

Original, elegant and hypnotically strange

Miranda Seymour, The New York Times

Her writing is full of melodic skills... Her sentences move like talk between intimates. Perhaps that is why this quizzical tale is so intensely moving

Gillian Beer, New Statesman
penguin pop image
penguin pop image