Winner of the 1999 Pulitzer and Pen/Faulkner prizes, The Hours is a daringand deeply affecting novel inspired by the life and work of VirginiaWoolf. Now a major motion picture, directed by Stephen Daldry (BILLYELLIOT) and starring Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and EdHarris. Exiled in Richmond in the 1920s, taken from her beloved Bloomsburyand lovingly watched over by her husband Leonard, Virginia Woolf strugglesto tame her rebellious mind and make a start on her new novel. In thebrooding heat of 1940s Los Angeles, a young wife and mother yearns toescape the claustrophobia of suburban domesticity and read her preciouscopy of Mrs Dalloway. And in New York in the 1990s, Clarissa Vaughan stepsout of her smart Greenwich Village apartment and goes shopping for flowersfor the party she is giving in honour of her life-long friend Richard, anaward-winning poet whose mind and body are being ravaged by AIDS. Theseare the characters in Michael Cunningham's exquisite and deeply moving newnovel, which takes Woolf's life and work as inspiration for a meditation onartistic behaviour, failure, love and madness. Moving effortlessy acrossthe decades and between England and America, Cunningham's elegant,haunting prose explores the pain and trauma of creativity and theimmutable relationship between writer and reader.