Dear Thief, Paperback

Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction

From acclaimed Orange Prize and Guardian First Book Award finalist Samantha Harvey, a stunning novel of female friendship, betrayal, and revenge

"You were going to work your way into my marriage and you were going to call its new three-way shape holy," writes the unnamed narrator of Dear Thief.

The thief is Nina, or Butterfly, who disappeared eighteen years earlier and who is being summoned by this letter, this bomb, these recollections, revisions, accusations, and confessions.

"Sometimes I imagine, out of sheer playfulness, that I am writing this as a kind of defence for having murdered and buried you under the patio."

Dear Thief is a letter to an old friend, a song, a jewel, and a continuously surprising triangular love story. Samantha Harvey writes with a dazzling blend of fury and beauty about the need for human connection and the brutal vulnerability that need exposes.

"While I write my spare hand might be doing anything for all you know; it might be driving a pin into your voodoo stomach."

Dear Thief is a rare novel that traverses the human heart in a striking and indelible way.

About the Author:

Born in Kent, England, in 1975, SAMANTHA HARVEY, has an MA in philosophy and an MA, with distinction, from the Bath Spa Creative Writing course in 2005. In addition to writing, she has traveled extensively and taught in Japan and lived in Ireland and New Zealand. She has written two other novels, "The Wilderness" which was a Man Booker Prize nominee and Orange Prize finalist, and "All Is Song." She recently cofounded an environmental charity and lives in Bath, England.