(Fourth Estate / Atico de los Libros, Spain / Mare Verlag, Germany / Einuadi, Italy; The Whale, Ecco USA).
Winner of 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. A gripping voyage of discovery into the heart of an obsession.
‘Philip Hoare was long been acclaimed as a brilliantly unconventional writer … This is the book he was born to write, a classic of its kind’, Rachel Cooke, The Observer.
I'm pressed by the heat into the sea, mirrored by the moon
4 am: swimming in the soft night and dark sea as the stars fall; a firework display for the fishes and me
3.30 am: swimming in a still black sea; shooting stars enough to pierce any heart