Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
  • Published: 29 October 2024
  • ISBN: 9781784879044
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $22.99

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

Formats & editions
Paperback
29 Oct 2024
Paperback
18 Jan 2022
Paperback
1 Nov 2014
EBook
1 Sep 2010
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'Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle; it didn't matter what' Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Jeanette Winterson's explosive first novel, a gripping coming-of-age story, a queer romance, a modern classic.

Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle.

This is the story of Jeanette, born to be one of God's elect: adopted by a fanatical Pentecostal family and ablaze with her own zeal for the scriptures, she seems perfectly suited for the life of a missionary. But then she converts Melanie, and realises she loves this woman almost as much as she loves the Lord. How on Earth could her Church called that passion Unnatural?

Both a groundbreaking coming-of-age novel and a pioneering work of autofiction, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit goes beyond facts into the deepest truths. Searing and tender, playful and provocative, it is a portrait of the artist as a young evangelist, re-writing her own Bible.

'Witty... extraordinary and exhilarating' The Times

'She is a master of her material, a writer in whom great talent abides' Vanity Fair

'Many consider her to be the best living writer in this language... In her hands, words are fluid, radiant, humming' Evening Standard

'A novel that deserves revisiting' Observer

'A wonderful rites-of-passage novel' Mariella Frostrup
  • Published: 29 October 2024
  • ISBN: 9781784879044
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $22.99
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About the author

Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson CBE was born in Manchester. Adopted by Pentecostal parents she was raised to be a missionary. This did and didn’t work out.

Discovering early the power of books she left home at 16 to live in a Mini and get on with her education. After graduating from Oxford University she worked for a while in the theatre and published her first novel at 25. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is based on her own upbringing but using herself as a fictional character. She scripted the novel into a BAFTA-winning BBC drama. 27 years later she re-visited that material in the bestselling memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? She has written 10 novels for adults, as well as children’s books, non-fiction and screenplays. She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester. She lives in the Cotswolds in a wood and in Spitalfields, London.

She believes that art is for everyone and it is her mission to prove it.

portrait photo of Jeanette Winterson

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Hansel and Greta
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Praise for Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

She is a master of her material, a writer in whom great talent abides

Vanity Fair

Many consider her to be the best living writer in this language... In her hands, words are fluid, radiant, humming

Evening Standard

Even at a time when so many good and interesting novels are coming out, hers stand out as performances of real originality and extraordinary promise

John Bayley

Wonderful rites-of-passage novel... where the author's blossoming Sapphic nature leads her to eschew her mothers proffered favourite

Mariella Frostrup

Still extraordinary, still brilliant

Metro

A novel that deserves revisiting...Winterson maintains a balance of tone, a trueness of voice... It remains one of the finest things Winterson has written

Observer

It is very funny, with an Alan Bennett sort of humour, beautifully written, quirky and likely to cause much tuttutting in conservative quarters

Daily Mail

This lesbian coming of age story set in northern England doesn't seem to have aged a bit

Independent

An instant classic

Rosemary Goring, Herald

You'll find everything you need to know about mustering the courage to embrace your true self and live life without fear in Winterson's hugely engaging semi-autobiographical novel

Mariella Frostrup, Sunday Times
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