Prodigal: Shortlisted for the Polari Prize 2019 Paperback / softback

Shortlisted for the Polari PrizeCharles Lambert brings us an innovative family drama exploring the nature of trust, death, and the things we do in the name of love. 'A writer who never ceases to surprise' Jenny Offill, author of WeatherMeet Jeremy, a hapless fifty-something who is scraping together a living in Paris writing soft-core pornography as 'Nathalie Cray'. When his all-but-estranged sister tells him their father is dying, he reluctantly travels back to his parental home in the English countryside.

Confronted with a life he had always sought to escape, Jeremy begins an emotionally fraught journey into his family’s chequered past – back to the unexpected death of his mother in a provincial Greek hospital years earlier, and even further back, to the moment at which the Eldritch family fell apart. A bold take on the queer coming-of-age story, Prodigal deftly reconsiders everything we think we know about the nature of trust, death, and what we do to each other in the name of love.