“Explore me,' you said and I collected my ropes, flasks and maps, expecting to be back home soon. I dropped into the mass of you and I cannot find the way out. Sometimes I think I’m free, coughed up like Jonah from the whale, but then I turn a corner and recognise myself again. Myself in your skin, myself lodged in your bones, myself floating in the cavities that decorate every surgeon’s wall. That is how I know you. You are what I know.”

English author

Jeanette Winterson is an English author. She is known for her fiction, especially her debut novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a semi-autobiographical story about a lesbian growing up in an English Pentecostal community. Her later novels often explore gender and sexual identity, and her more recent work turns to the relationship between people and technology. Her books have been translated into nearly 20 languages, and she also broadcasts and teaches creative writing.