Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize 2022

‘Original, memorable, shimmering’ - Sarah Moss

Today I might trace the rungs of her larynx or tap at her trachea like the bones of a xylophone …

Something gleeful and malevolent is moving in Lia’s body, learning her life from the inside out. A shape-shifter. A disaster tourist. It’s travelling down the banks of her canals. It’s spreading.

When a sudden diagnosis upends Lia’s world, the boundaries between her past and her present begin to collapse. Deeply buried secrets stir awake. As the voice prowling in Lia takes hold of her story, and the landscape around becomes indistinguishable from the one within, Lia and her family are faced with some of the hardest questions of all: how can we move on from the events that have shaped us, when our bodies harbour everything? And what does it mean to die with grace, when you’re simply not ready to let go?

Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is a story of coming of age at the end of a life. Utterly heart-breaking yet darkly funny, Maddie Mortimer’s astonishing debut is a symphonic journey through one woman’s body: a wild and lyrical celebration of desire, forgiveness and the darkness within us all.

‘Restlessly inventive … delicate and persuasive’ - The Guardian ‘Extraordinary, kaleidoscopic’ - Daisy Johnson