The Swordfish and the Star Life on Cornwall's Most Treacherous Stretch of Coast

The romance, danger and reality of life in a fishing community, from a highly acclaimed young writer.

The Penwith Peninsula in Cornwall is where the land ends. In The Swordfish and the Star Gavin Knight takes us into this huddle of grey roofs at the edge of the sea at the beginning of the 21st century. It is revealed as a microcosm of Britain, a Middlemarch, with the drama and increasing precariousness of life there resonating far beyond its shores.

Gavin Knight has caught the stories of dreamers and fighters, of the lost and the saved, the timeless and the new -- and above all, of those last frontiersmen, the Cornish fishermen. Cornwall and the seas around its coasts are brought to life, mixing pubs and drugs and sea spray, moonlit beaches and shattering storms, myth and urban myth. The result is an arresting tapestry of a place we thought we knew; the real Cornwall behind our holiday snaps and picture postcards.

Based on immersive research and rich with the voices of a cast of remarkable characters, this is an eye-opening, poignant account of life on Britain's most dangerous stretch of coastline from one of Britain's most promising young non-fiction writers.

GAVIN KNIGHT's first book, Hood Rat, was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and the Crime Writer's Association Non-fiction Dagger in 2012. To research it, he spent two years with criminals, frontline police units and gang members from the inner cities of Britain. His work has appeared in publications including The Times, Guardian, Telegraph, Prospect, Newsweek, New Statesman and Esquire; and he has appeared on BBC, CNN, ITN, Channel Four News and Sky News. This is his second book.