Nicholas ShakespeareNovelist and biographer
Cover of The High Flyer

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Fiction

The High Flyer

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.

Published
1993
Awards
Longlisted for Booker Prize; selected for Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists, 1993

Reviews

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