Project Description

The High Flyer, 1993 (Longlisted for Booker Prize; selected for Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists, 1993)

Thomas Wavery is the new Consul General at Abyla on the tip of North Africa. A career diplomat, Wavery was once a high flyer, but an affair with a younger woman has dashed his dreams of ambassadorship. He arrives in Abyla with his wife suing for divorce, his passport stolen by a Gibraltarian ape and precious little enthusiasm for the task ahead. His one hope of redemption is a visit from his new love.

He tells a story like an angel… Wonderful
Observer
A deeply satisfying book. I feel quite exceptionally inclined to read it all over again
Rosemary Stoyle Literary Review
Shakespeare has completed a richly detailed, remarkably complete imaginary world
The Times
His lyricism is all his own and he raises his lovers to a plateau of passion where Greene never ventured
Sunday Telegraph
Wavery’s story has a lyric simplicity and an emotional subtlety that are moving, involving and beautifully observed
Independent
The Vision of Elena Silves was almost too precociously good. The High Flyer rolls back the doors of the Shakespearian bunker to reveal the arsenal within. It’s a very good novel
William Boyd