Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“To read Jeanette Winterson is to love her.”—O, the Oprah Magazine

The 40th anniversary edition of a beloved modern classic and pioneering work of autofiction—a funny, poignant exploration of a young girl’s quirky passage into adulthood—with a new introduction and afterword by the author

Jeanette Winterson’s extraordinary career began at the age of twenty-five with the publication of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. An international bestseller and winner of the prestigious Whitbread Award for Best First Fiction, it is considered a classic of contemporary literature and taught widely around the world, in courses ranging from core undergraduate classes to women’s studies and queer studies.

Jeanette is a bright and rebellious orphan who is adopted into an evangelical household in the dour, industrial north of England. Her youth is spent embroidering grim religious mottoes and shaking her little tambourine for Jesus. But as this budding missionary comes of age and comes to terms with her unorthodox sexuality, the peculiar balance of her God-fearing household collapses. Jeanette’s insistence on listening to truths of her own heart and mind—and on reporting them with wit and passion—makes for an unforgettable chronicle of an extraordinary passage into adulthood.