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  • Published: 15 August 2015
  • ISBN: 9780099589891
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $27.99

Thirst




An unconventional, will-they-won’t-they love story, that takes us from London to Siberia, and from hope to heartbreak, and back again.

From the prize-winning author of Tony Hogan Bought Me An Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma

Winner of the Prix Femina Etranger


London, in the frayed heat of summer. Alena is shoplifting shoes when Dave catches her in the act and so begins an unlikely relationship between two people with little in common and everything to lose.


But the past is a dark place. And both of them have secrets they’ve no idea how to live with – or leave behind. Yet still they find themselves fighting with all they’ve got for a future together. But is love enough?


'Accomplished... Beautiful... Heart-wrenching' Independent on Sunday

Shortlisted for the Prix Femina Prize

  • Published: 15 August 2015
  • ISBN: 9780099589891
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $27.99

About the author

Kerry Hudson

Kerry Hudson was born in Aberdeen. Her first novel, Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-cream Float Before He Stole My Ma, won the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust First Book Award and was shortlisted for an array of prizes including the Guardian First Book Award and the Sky Arts Awards. Thirst, her second novel, won the prestigious prix Femina etranger. Lowborn is her first work of non-fiction, and her journey has led to a highly successful column for the Pool. She currently lives in Liverpool.

Also by Kerry Hudson

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Praise for Thirst

Both funny and touching... Hudson's debut was highly praised and this is a terrific follow-up

Woman & Home

Tremendously affecting... impressively unostentatious in its instinct for a common story within a city of millions that never gets heard

Claire Allfree, Metro

A classy will-they won't-they romance with a difference... Sheer escapism from start to finish

Bella

There is a love story at the hear tof this one which thankfully isn't saccharine or sugar coated but real and bumpy and awkward and wonderful... her characters are real, funny and flawed... Kerry is rather a genius

Savidge Reads

Kerry Hudson has consolidated her position with this second novel as a writer who is prepared to face the injustices and the grimness of life, and tell of lives usually ignored... Thirst is hardly an easy summer read... but it is probably an essential one

Lesley McDowell, Scotsman

A brilliant, enthralling saga, Thirst presents with such uncommon verisimilitude that scarcely a syllable appears contrived

Joseph Crilly, Irish Times

Hudson captures the bustle of life in Hackney and Russia with energy and a sharp eye for detail… [Her characters] have love, guts, humour and conscience. This is Love on the Dole 21st-century style

Louise Welsh, Guardian

An unusual love story... a refreshing change from the plethora of middle-class novel fare that simply holds a mirror to the majority of readers

John Harding, Daily Mail

Hudson is a star in the making

Good Housekeeping

It’s a brave book, easily consumed in a day, and I’m in awe of Hudson’s expert demolition of the conventions of the genre

Emma Rees, Times Higher Education

Accomplished…Beautiful…Heart-wrenching

Independent on Sunday

A fizzing, breathless love story from a terrifically talented storyteller

The List

A tender, off-kilter love story… the novel paints a vivid picture of two very different kinds of misfit, falling in love over one dusty, teeming London summer

Observer

Thirst is shot through with a vein of optimism, and never lets go of its belief in the power of love, compassion and forgiveness

Alastair Mabbott, Herald

Unflinching yet tender-hearted study of two lowly characters teetering on the brink

Daragh Reddin, Irish Times