Euphoria - Lily King

Winner of the 2014 Kirkus Prize for Fiction

'It's that moment about two months in, when you think you've finally got a handle on the place. Suddenly it feels within your grasp . . . feels entirely yours. It's the briefest, purest euphoria.'

It is December 1932 and Andrew Bankson, isolated for several years whilst studying a tribe in New Guinea, is increasingly frustrated by his research. Then on Christmas Eve, he meets Nell Stone, famous and controversial anthropologist, and her wry, mercurial husband, Fen. Enthralled by the magnetic couple, Bankson promises to take Nell and Fen to a new tribe they can study, and within months the three are producing their best ever work. But this intense new environment is dangerous as well as invigorating, and soon Bankson has ignited a firestorm of fierce love and jealousy that burns out of control. Ultimately, their ground-breaking work will make history, but not without terrible sacrifice.

Set between the wars in a landscape on the brink of massive and irreversible change, Euphoria by Lily King is a captivating story of desire, possession and discovery inspired by real events in the life of Margaret Mead, a woman whose work changed the way we understand our world.