The award-winning literary masterpiece of Shirley Hazzard - 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. Now reissued as a Virago Classic with Bite

'One of the great English-language novels of the twentieth century' PARIS REVIEW

'The Transit of Venus is astronomical: as sharp, remote and dazzling as a celestial body' LAUREN GROFF

'A wonderfully mysterious book . . . unforgettably rich' ANNE TYLER

'Epic and microscopic . . . stitched in prose of gorgeously sustained intensity' GEOFF DYER

The tragedy is not that love doesn't last. The tragedy is the love that lasts.

Two sisters, Caroline and Grace Bell, leave Australia to begin a new life in post-war England. Courted long and hopelessly by young scientist, Ted Tice, strong-willed Caro is to find that love brings both betrayal and hope. The milder Grace seeks fulfilment in an apparently happy marriage. But as the decades pass and their paths weave and cross across the world - from Sydney to London, New York to Stockholm - two slow-burning secrets wait in ambush for them.

Shirley Hazzard's breathtaking masterpiece is an intricately plotted Greek tragedy, a sweeping family saga, and a desperate love story.

Details

ISBN13: 9780349020907
Format: Paperback / softback
Number of Pages: 368
Edition:
Publication Date: 31 Mar 2026
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 19.6(H)x12.6(L)x2.6(W)291
Weight (gm): 291

Author Biography

Shirley Hazzard (1931-2016) was born in Australia and travelled the world during her early years, a result of her parents' diplomatic postings. In 1947, at the age of sixteen, she was engaged by British intelligence to monitor the civil war in China. At twenty, she moved to New York, working for the United Nations throughout much of the 1950s, which included a posting to Naples. Muriel Spark introduced her to the translator and biographer Francis Steegmuller, whom Hazzard married in 1963. Her novels The Bay of Noon (1971) and The Transit of Venus (1981) were National Book Award finalists, while her last novel, The Great Fire, won the 2003 National Book Award, Miles Franklin Award and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. She was also the author of two collections of short stories, and several works of nonfiction including the memoir Greene on Capri.

Reviews

An immense, involving love story . . . written with Hazzard's characteristic precision, attention to detail and culture * Country and Town House *