Shortlisted for the 1974 Booker Prize, and with a new introduction by A. K. Blakemore, a razor-sharp and mercilessly funny novel of friendship, class and desire.  

 Freda and Brenda divide the bed they share with a barricade of books, then spend their days working side by side in an Italian-run wine-bottling factory. A picnic out at Windsor Park for the two women and their colleagues offers promise for Freda and terror for Brenda. Passions run high before coming, brutally, to a startling end. With an unforgettably dark heart, The Bottle Factory Outing is laugh-out-loud funny, grubbily evocative and slyly weird, and is for fans of Muriel Spark, Anita Brookner and early Ian McEwan. 

 ‘One of the greatest novels of all time.’ Observer  

 ‘Outrageously funny and horrifying.’ Graham Greene  

 ‘Superb . . . vibrant . . . profoundly comic.’ The Times