A tender and incisive exploration of love, desire, and obsession, Kingfisher is a quietly powerful story of the choices that shape a life.

When a creative writing academic becomes captivated by his colleague—a poet whose life and artistry seem to exist in a world apart his steady relationship with his partner, Michael, begins to unravel. Michael is safe, familiar, and deeply loved. But the poet is something else entirely: elusive, magnetic, and impossible to ignore.

As he drifts between the life he knows and the one he longs for, fascination deepens into obsession. The poet, his Kingfisher, becomes the centre of his world, blurring the boundaries between desire and reality.

But when illness casts a shadow over both worlds, he is forced to confront difficult questions about love, possession, and what we owe to one another.

Subtle, compassionate, and deeply affecting, this novel shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2026 explores the fragile intersections of grief, power, and longing, and the complex emotional truths that lie between them.