Dear Thief

Shortlisted for the 2015 James Tait Black Memorial PrizeLonglisted for the 2015 Baileys Women's Prize for FictionLonglisted for the 2015 Jerwood PrizeIn the middle of a winter’s night, a woman wraps herself in a blanket, picks up a pen and starts writing to an estranged friend. FROM THE AUTHOR OF 2024 BOOKER PRIZE WINNING ORBITALIn the middle of a winter’s night, a woman wraps herself in a blanket, picks up a pen and starts writing to an estranged friend. In answer to a question you asked a long time ago, she writes, and so begins a letter that calls up a shared past both women have preferred to forget.Without knowing if her friend, Butterfly, is even alive or dead, she writes night after night – a letter of friendship that turns into something more revealing and recriminating. By turns a belated outlet of rage, an act of self-defence, and an offering of forgiveness, the letter revisits a betrayal that happened a decade and a half before, and dissects what is left of a friendship caught between the forces of hatred and love.‘A glorious, sensuous, grown-up novel, intelligent and passionate’ TESSA HADLEY‘Ravishing… Harvey offers an incandescent vision of hope and acceptance’ SUNDAY TELEGRAPH