The Porpoise

Shakespeare’s Pericles is transformed by Mark Haddon into a vivid, breathtaking adventure that zooms between antiquity and the present day.

A motherless girl grows up in isolated luxury, hidden from the world by her wealthy father. She believes their life together is normal – but as time passes, she has a growing sense that something between them is very wrong.

She cannot escape, so she seeks solace in her books. Her favourite tales are those that conjure ancient worlds – of angry gods and heroic mortals, one of whom will some day come to her rescue.

Soon, she will forget where the page ends and her mind begins.

‘Just downright brilliant… a transcendent, transporting experience’ Observer

‘A full-throttle blast of storytelling mastery’ Max Porter

SHAKESPEARE RETOLD: Time travel. Zombies. Power-hungry media moguls. This is Shakespeare as you’ve never seen him before: nine iconic plays transformed by the best novelists of our time, with covers by Michael Craig-Martin.

Author Biography

Mark Haddon is a writer and artist. His bestselling novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003) won seventeen literary prizes, was translated into forty-five languages, and went on to become an award-winning stage adaptation by Simon Stephens. His most recent works of fiction include a novel, The Porpoise (2019), and a collection of fables and stories, Dogs and Monsters (2024).