The shipping news

Annie Proulx's highly acclaimed, international bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. One of the ten books - novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography - that make up our Matchbook Classics' series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist. Quoyle is a hapless, hopeless hack journalist living and working in New York.

While weathering the storm that is his marriage of one-way love to his no-good wife Petal, disaster strikes and Petal is killed in a spectacular road accident. Set adrift on an aimless quest, Quoyle heads for the land of his forefathers - to the remote corners of far-flung Newfoundland.

With his delinquent daughters Bunny and Sunshine in tow, Quoyle takes up the post of shipping news reporter, and finds himself part of an unfolding, exhilarating Atlantic drama. The Shipping News is an irresistible comedy of human life and possibility.