“The Cunning Little Vixen, in which a fox is caught by a hunter and kept in a farmyard with the other animals. He keeps her because he loves her, despite the fact she is destructive, and there is a value for her too in his attention, though its consequence is her captivity. But her nature drives her to seek the wild, and one day she escapes the farmyard and finds her way back into the forest; but instead of feeling liberated she is terrified, for having lived in the farmyard most of her life she has forgotten how to be free.”

English novelist and writer, contemporary

Rachel Cusk is an English novelist and writer of memoir and other nonfiction. She is known for fiction and prose published across several books, and for a career that has drawn award recognition. Her work has won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Somerset Maugham Award, and has also been shortlisted and longlisted for prizes including the Governor General's Award and the Booker Prize. Her writing often addresses motherhood, marriage, satire, and more experimental approaches to narrative.