Jeanette Winterson
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit at 40 Years
– Global Stage
Join us live at the Festival or online for June's Hay Festival Book Club event.
Marking 40 years of Jeanette Winterson’s explosive first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Published when she was just 25, the book is a gripping coming-of-age story, a queer romance and a modern classic. It tells the story of Jeanette’s avatar, a fiction as well as a fact. Adopted into a northern, working-class family who believe their new baby is destined to be a missionary, Jeanette falls in love with a young woman. Love, as always, changes the road ahead.
In 2011 Jeanette Winterson revisited this material in her best selling memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Read it? Let us know what you think on TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram using #HFBookClub.
Further reading
Digested classics, The Guardian
“She gave me the chance that became my life”: Jeanette Winterson on her first editor, Philippa Brewster, The Guardian
About the author
Jeanette Winterson CBE, was born in Manchester. She published her first novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit in 1985. It was adapted by her for the BBC in 1990 and won a BAFTA for best drama. Jeanette Winterson has written numerous novels, short stories, works for children, screenplays, and non-fiction. She regularly talks to tech conferences, following her essays about AI: 12 Bytes at AI. Her latest book is the collection of ghost stories, Night Side of the River.
She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester.
About Hay Festival Book Club
Timeless titles to offer you a break from the day to day. Can't decide what to read next? Follow your curiosity and join Hay Festival on a journey to imagine the world anew through great literature. Unconstrained by genre or form these are our monthly picks of great books worth reading (or re-reading) right now.
Throughout the month, we'll share interesting links and articles relating to our selection on social media using #HFBookClub and invite you all to get involved with your questions and comments. Each selection will also be marked with a free online event.
If you'd like to recommend a book for consideration, get in touch via bookclub@hayfestival.org.
Happy reading!
In partnership with Hay Festival Book Club. Supported by the Unwin Charitable Trust
Attend In Person – Event 396
Buy the book for this event
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
'Then you do not love the Lord.'
'Yes, I love both of them.'
'You cannot.'
'I do.''
This is the story of Jeanette, born to be one of God's elect: adopted by a fanatical Pentecostal family and ablaze with her own zeal for the scriptures, she seems perfectly suited for the life of a missionary. But then she converts Melanie, and realises she loves this woman almost as much as she loves the Lord. How on Earth could her Church called that passion Unnatural?
Both a groundbreaking coming-of-age novel and a pioneering work of autofiction, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit goes beyond facts into the deepest truths. Searing and tender, playful and provocative, it is a portrait of the artist as a young evangelist, re-writing her own Bible.
A beautiful hardback edition of Jeanette Winterson's explosive first novel: a gripping coming-of-age story, a queer romance, a modern classic.
