Water Lily

By Susanna Jones

Runa is a young Japanese high school teacher leaving the country to avoid the scandal she has created by sleeping with one of her students. She steals her sister’s passport and boards the ferry to Shanghai. Then, careful to impersonate her sister, she is quiet, docile and discreet…

Meanwhile, on the last stretch of a fraught and tiring mission to find a wife, an Englishman also boards the ferry. Rebuffed in Tokyo, Ralph hopes that on the Chinese mainland he will meet a gentle, beautiful girl to return home with.

When these two meet, suppressing at first their secrets and obsessions on this long and claustrophobic journey, we enter a desolate, emotional landscape as Runa’s journey begins to turn into a surreal and terrifying nightmare . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Aug 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9781447207108

Susanna Jones

Susanna Jones grew up in Yorkshire and studied drama at London University. Her work has been translated into over twenty languages and has won the CWA John Creasey Dagger, a Betty Trask Award and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. She lives in Brighton. The Earthquake Bird is her first novel.

Book preview

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