BOOK OF THE YEAR
MAURICE AND MARALYN: AN EXTRAORDINARY TRUE STORY OF SHIPWRECK, SURVIVAL AND LOVE
BY SOPHIE ELMHIRST
An extraordinary true story of shipwreck, survival and love. Bored of 1970s suburban life, Maurice and Maralyn plan their escape: sell the house, build a boat, set sail for New Zealand. Then, halfway around the world, their beloved boat is struck by a whale and the pair are cast adrift. Alone on a tiny raft, their love is put to the test.
Read our exclusive extract from “Maurice and Maralyn” here.
“Maurice and Maralyn is an enthralling, engrossing story of survival and the resilience of the human spirit. Impressively novelistic in its narrative approach, it is a gripping retelling of a true but forgotten story. It is a story of a marriage as much as of an adventure at sea, one that subtly explores the dynamics of a relationship under the greatest imaginable stress. Shining through is the heroine’s courage and fortitude; as Maurice flounders, it is Maralyn’s strength that allows them to survive at sea for 118 days – the book is a tribute to Maralyn’s grit. Sophie Elmhirst’s writing is understated but powerful, immersing the reader intimately in the unfolding drama and the horror of struggling to survive against the odds with very few resources.
We unanimously agreed that Maurice and Maralyn is a non-fiction work that reaches the highest literary eminence, and we are delighted to announce it as the Nero Gold Prize 2024 Book of the Year.”
Bill Bryson, Chair of Judges
Photo by Jack Hall/PA Media Assignments for Nero Book Awards
SOPHIE ELMHIRST
Sophie Elmhirst is a prizewinning writer for the Guardian Long Read and The Economist’s 1843 magazine, and a contributing editor at the Gentlewoman and Harper’s Bazaar. In 2020 she won the British Press Award for Feature Writer of the Year; she has also won a Foreign Press Award and been longlisted for the Orwell Prize. She first came across the story of Maurice and Maralyn Bailey researching a piece on our desire to escape. This is her first book. She lives in London.
Q&A with the author
What is your favourite place to write?
I’m like a restless kid when I write, always changing places or going to cafes or the library, even though I know the best work gets done at home with my phone banished to another room.
What book would you most recommend to others?
The first thing that came to mind was Hilary Mantel’s memoir, Giving Up the Ghost. She wrote it before the Cromwell books, but it contains all the same brilliance, just trained on herself as a subject instead. It’s taut and visceral, and she writes about the experience of being in a woman’s body, and a body in pain, like no one else.
Beyond their remarkable circumstances, what was it about Maurice and Maralyn that you found so compelling as people?
So much: his self-lacerating despair, her delusional optimism. They made an odd couple, but somehow it worked, and I found their recognition and understanding of each other’s flaws and particularities incredibly moving.
Photography © Marc Sethi
The judges said: “A captivating gem of creative non-fiction writing that grips both as a human survival story, and as a profound, almost mythical tale of the wide blue yonder and the things that sustain us in times of crisis.”
2024 Non-Fiction judges
