The Odyssey

Wickedly funny and slyly poignant, a very modern satire on cruise ships, crappy jobs and capitalism from the prize-winning author of Supper Club

Ingrid is a gift shop girl. Before that she was an IT technician, and before that a croupier, and before that a nursery nurse. She has worked on an enormous, luxury cruise liner for the past five years and in that time she has done more jobs than she can remember. She isn’t good at any of them but she’s good at pretending. And the endless maze-like corridors of the ship are the perfect place to forget the life she left behind on land and the person she used to be.

Until the day that Ingrid is selected for the ship’s prestigious ‘mentorship scheme’ – a mysterious initiative run by its captain and self-anointed lifestyle guru, Keith – and slowly but surely things start to go wrong.

Part The Circle, part Convenience Store Woman and part My Year of Rest and Relaxation, The Odyssey is a merciless takedown of modern capitalism and our anxious, ill-fated quests for something to believe in. And as its title suggests, it is a voyage that will eventually lead its unlikely heroine all the way home. Though she’d do almost anything to avoid getting there…