Monique Roffey is a London-based novelist who teaches creative writing in the UK, Trinidad, Cuba and Greece. Her novel
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle (Simon and Schuster UK) was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2010.
Roffey's latest novel,
The Mermaid of Black Conch, is nominated for the Costa novel of the year award.
At the
Guardian she tagged ten mermaid books she's admired and been inspired by, including:
The Moon and the Sun by Vonda N McIntyre
In 1997 this sci-fi novel beat A Game of Thrones to a Nebula award. It has since been made into a film (as The King’s Daughter). Set in 17th-century France, in the court of the Sun King, a “sea monster” is caught who turns out to be a woman, and is also an intelligent and sentient being. Yet again, we see the feminism in the mermaid story, as men gang up to keep her, or eat her, and women try to free her. Eventually, she is freed and shows her human friends where a vast hoard of sunken treasure is hidden. Think mermaid story mates with Ursula K Le Guin. Kind of brilliant.
Read about
the other entries on the list.
--Marshal Zeringue
Monique Roffey is a London-based novelist who teaches creative writing in the UK, Trinidad, Cuba and Greece. Her novel The White Woman on the Green Bicycle (Simon and Schuster UK) was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2010.
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