'Wonderful, life-saving ... places Russell Hoban among the greatest, timeless novelists' The Times

Born to swim thousands of miles in the ocean, the giant sea turtles are now trapped in a tank of golden-green water at London Zoo. But not for much longer. Two lonely people, a bookseller and a children's illustrator, have begun thinking turtle thoughts. As they come together to hatch a plan to release the turtles into the sea, their diaries reveal how they find their own lives changing in imperceptible and quite unintended ways.

**'Crackles with witty detail, mordant intelligence and self-deprecating irony' Time

'This lovely human fable seems to me one of the best things of its kind - a fine and touching achievement' John Fowles**