Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

“Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle; it didn't matter what.” Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Jeanette Winterson's explosive first novel is a gripping coming-of-age story, a queer romance, and a modern classic.

“Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle.”

This is the story of Jeanette, born to be one of God's elect—adopted by a fanatical Pentecostal family and ablaze with her own zeal for the scriptures, she seems perfectly suited for the life of a missionary. But then she converts Melanie, and realises she loves this woman almost as much as she loves the Lord. How on Earth could her Church call that passion unnatural?

Both a groundbreaking coming-of-age novel and a pioneering work of autofiction, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit goes beyond facts into the deepest truths. Searing and tender, playful and provocative, it is a portrait of the artist as a young evangelist, re-writing her own Bible.

'Witty... extraordinary and exhilarating' The Times

'She is a master of her material, a writer in whom great talent abides' Vanity Fair

'Many consider her to be the best living writer in this language... In her hands, words are fluid, radiant, humming' Evening Standard

'A novel that deserves revisiting' Observer

'A wonderful rites-of-passage novel' Mariella Frostrup