Maddie Mortimer was born in London in 1996. Her debut novel Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is shortlisted for the 2022 Goldsmiths Prize, was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, and won the Desmond Elliott award. Mortimer also writes for film and TV.
In Maps, Lia is diagnosed with terminal cancer. The book explores her changing relationship to her body as her disease develops, and the impact this has on her husband and her 12-year-old daughter, Iris. Lia is the only child of a vicar and his conservative wife, and the narrative moves back in time to her childhood and teenage years, and her first sexual relationship. In Mortimer’s playful book – in which prose sits alongside verse, and the text forms shapes on the page – lies another, troublesome narrative voice. Mortimer calls this narrator “the book’s destructive core, but also its creative essence”.
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