'If you have love, even plain cold water is sweet'

The Shell Collector

The Shell Collector

Anthony Doerr

A blind man spends his days roaming the beaches of Kenya collecting shells, classifying them by feeling their whorls, spines and folds in his fingers. A young woman discovers that she can explore the inner world of an animal’s mind by touching its freshly dead body. A refugee from Liberia, who cannot escape the horrors that he has witnessed, finds salvation in the clandesitne act of burying the hearts of beached whales.

In The Shell Collector Antony Doerr illuminates both the riotous dangers of the natural world and the rocky terrain of the human heart.

Reviews of The Shell Collector

    • ‘Extraordinary’ Guardian
    • ‘Exquisite’ The Times
    • ‘A show-stopping debut, as close to faultless as any writer could wish for’ L A Times
    • ‘I can think of very few authors who can put together a sentence with such ecstasy, whose words sing with music and such sheer rapture at what they embody’ The Times
    • ‘Doerr’s prose dazzles from the very beginning’ New York Times
    • ‘Unforgettable – not so much a book of short stories as a book of short myths’ Elizabeth Gilbert (author of EAT, PRAY, LOVE)

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