The Transit of Venus

“Stevenson is a confident, inventive guide through the masterful narrative structure of this 1980 novel, engaging in a bold yet mature dialogue with the legacy of the crème de la crème of 20th century modernist novel writing alongside Proust, Joyce, and Wolfe.”—Booklist

“Juliet Stevenson narrates with elegance, ... capturing the elegiacal mood of Hazzard’s lyrically described world.” –Library Journal

The award-winning, New York Times bestselling literary masterpiece—the story of two beautiful orphan sisters whose fates are as moving and wonderful, and yet as predestined, as the transits of the planets themselves

“An almost perfect novel” (The New York Times), The Transit of Venus follows Caroline and Grace Bell as they leave Australia to begin a new life in post-war England. From Sydney to London, New York, and Stockholm, and from the 1950s to the 1980s, the two sisters experience seduction and abandonment, marriage and widowhood, love and betrayal.

Caro, gallant and adventurous, has been courted long and hopelessly by young scientist, Ted Tice. The milder Grace seeks fulfilment in an apparently happy marriage. But as the decades pass and the characters weave in and out of each other's lives, love, death, and two secrets wait in ambush for them.

In exquisite prose, Shirley Hazzard tells the story of the displacements and absurdities of modern life. The result is at once an intricately plotted Greek tragedy, a sweeping family saga, and a tantalizing love story that will transport listeners with “its plushness, patient description, [and] etherizing beauty” (Paul Sagal, The New York Times).