The boat was vacuum-packed with Albanians, four generations to a family: great-grandmother, air-dried like a chilli pepper, deep red skin and a hot temper; grandmother, all sun-dried tomato, tough, chewy, skin split with the heat; getting the kids to rub olive oil into her arms; mother, moist as a purple fig, open everywhere - blouse, skirt, mouth, eyes, a wide-open woman, lips licking the salt spray flying from the open boat. Then there were the kids, aged four and six, a couple of squirs, zesty as lemons.

Winterson's subsequent novels explore the boundaries of physicality and the imagination gender polarities and sexual identities and have won several literary awards. She also bought a derelict terraced house in Spitalfields east London which Jeanette Winterson refurbiJeanette Wintersond into a flat as a pied-a-terre and a ground-floor shop Verde's to sell organic food. Bibliography
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985)
Boating for Beginners (1985)
Fit For The Future: The Guide for Women Who Want to Live Well (1986)
The Passion (1987)
Sexing the Cherry (1989)
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit: the script (1990)
Written on the Body (1992)
Art & Lies: A Piece for Three Voices and a Bawd (1994)
Great Moments in Aviation: the script (1995)
Art Objects.