The Porpoise cover art

The Porpoise

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Unlimited access to our all-you-can-listen catalogue of 15K+ audiobooks and podcasts
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The Porpoise

By: Mark Haddon
Narrated by: Tim McInnerny
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

About this listen

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Porpoise, written by Mark Haddon, read by Tim McInnerny.

‘I really am so very, very sorry about this,’ he says, in an oddly formal voice… They strike the side of a grain silo. They are travelling at seventy miles per hour.

A newborn baby is the sole survivor of a terrifying plane crash.

She is raised in wealthy isolation by an overprotective father. She knows nothing of the rumours about a beautiful young woman, hidden from the world.

When a suitor visits, he understands far more than he should. Forced to run for his life, he escapes aboard The Porpoise, an assassin on his tail…

So begins a wild adventure of a novel, damp with salt spray, blood and tears. A novel that leaps from the modern era to ancient times; a novel that soars, and sails, and burns long and bright; a novel that almost drowns in grief yet swims ashore; in which pirates rampage, a princess wins a wrestler’s hand, and ghost women with lampreys’ teeth drag a man to hell – and in which the members of a shattered family, adrift in a violent world, journey towards a place called home.

 Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Sea Adventures Adventure Pirate

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Firetide Coast cover art
The Eyes of the Queen cover art
Last Train to Helsingør cover art
The World Beyond Our Knowing cover art
The Mythic Dream cover art
Hyperion cover art
Elantris: Tenth Anniversary Author's Definitive Edition (Part 1 of 2) (Dramatized Adaptation) cover art
The Shadow of What Was Lost cover art
The Priory of the Orange Tree cover art
New Spring cover art
Unfettered cover art
The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 4 cover art
The Bone Witch cover art

Critic reviews

Wondrous... a violent, all-action thrill ride shuttling between antiquity and the present... just downright brilliant... a transcendant, transporting experience... A helix, a mirror ball, a literary box of tricks… take your pick: this is a full-spectrum pleasure, mixing metafictional razzmatazz with pulse-racing action and a prose style to die for. I’ll be staggered if it’s not spoken of whenever prizes are mentioned this year (Anthony Cummins)
A beautifully rendered retelling…[and] a gripping novel that, despite its rollicking plot, never feels relentless, and is often very affecting indeed (Jon Day)
The extraordinary force and vividness of Haddon's prose ensure that The Porpoise reads [...] as a continually unfolding demonstration of the transporting power of stories... This is language that knows how to do things: sail a ship, make a gold buckle, negotiate the tides of the Thames. It's a stunningly effective combination of the quotidian and the mythic that pins impossibility to the page (Justine Jordan)
Compelling, satisfying and moving... Haddon's writing is exquisite, balancing simple storytelling with searing insight (Paul Connolly)
The Porpoise is terrifically violent, with a bright, innocent ferocity … Haddon wants to restore agency to the female characters sidelined by the Antiochus legend. This could feel like a condescending attempt to end up on the right of history, but doesn’t (Katy Waldman)
Told in Haddon’s generously telegraphic prose – onparticularly good form here – [...] The Porpoise is a defiantly odd novel, dependent on the fine caul of Haddon’s prose to keep together the heavily spiced romantic mixture within… Haunted not just by its direct source but by Ovid and others, the novel exists in a world of old magic, of stories within stories, and webs of allusion that would crumble swiftly if mishandled, but which, here, weave their spell marvellously well (Tim Smith-Laing)
[The Porpoise] races across the oceans: it is a book of thrilling, salt-caked adventures that scintillate like sunlight on the surface of the sea. There are plagues and famines and sword fights with not-quite human adversaries. There are desperate escapes and terrible family separations and dramatic recognitions. It is a breathless, delightful, utterly absorbing read
The Porpoise by Mark Haddon is the book I’ve recommended the most this year because it’s the one I had the most fun with. It kept shifting as I read it, changing from action to romance to science-fiction. It’s dizzying (Stuart Turton)
Beguiling...ambitious...bold... Haddon's prose is beautiful, and he is utterly in command of his slippery material... An elegant homage to stories' capacity for endless renewal (Claire Allfree)
Beautifully written (Johanna Thomas-Corr)
All stars
Most relevant
This is a compelling listen, taking you to different places and building over time. Loved it.

Compelling

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I never get tired of hearing the threads of these familiar stories woven together into new cloth. The quality of the writing is a sheer joy and the way in which the familiar tales are presented leads the listener/ reader into nevertheless hoping each twist and turn will lead to a happy ending. I've listened to this twice now and I still find myself listening almost as if for the first time..

Exquisite writing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Chosen as a bookgroup book, The Porpoise might not be a book I would have chosen, I certainly didn’t have time to read it myself this month ... hence the beauty of having it read to one!
Tim McInnerny really brought alive Haddons story, a complex plot that moves backwards and forwards through centuries and destinations.
The description of Middle Eastern markets were particularly wonderful and evocative.
The best type of story, that leaves you wondering ...

Another gripping Audible listen!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Overall this was an enjoyable story, told in two time periods with interlinked plot lines. The ancient Greek story which led to Shakespeare's Pericles is retold for a new age and it really works.

Great narration.

A new take on Pericles

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
loved his first book but this is so different and didn't hook me as so fantastical and bit all over the place. didn't love it

struggled to finish

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews