Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies

Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is about a family coming to terms with the unthinkable: the death of a mother. Playful and funny, profound and heart-breaking, this is a daring debut about motherhood, anatomy, language and the darkness within us all.

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Longlisted for the Booker Prize
Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize
Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize
Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize

'Original, memorable, shimmering' - Sarah Moss
'Restlessly inventive . . . delicate and persuasive' - The Guardian

Something gleeful and malevolent is moving in Lia’s body, learning her life from the inside out. A shape-shifter. A disaster tourist. It’s travelling down the banks of her canals. It’s spreading.

When a sudden diagnosis upends Lia’s world, the boundaries between her past and her present begin to collapse. Deeply buried secrets stir awake. As the voice prowling in Lia takes hold of her story, and the landscape around becomes indistinguishable from the one within, Lia and her family are faced with some of the hardest questions of all: how can we move on from the events that have shaped us, when our bodies harbour everything? And what does it mean to die with grace, when you’re simply not ready to let go?

Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is a story of coming-of-age at the end of a life. Utterly heart-breaking yet darkly funny, Maddie Mortimer’s astonishing debut is a symphonic journey through one woman’s body: a wild and lyrical celebration of desire, forgiveness, and the darkness within us all.