Meet Lilo – an inflatable, blue-and-red seaside accessory. Being an inanimate object in a story grounded firmly in reality, Lilo cannot talk, think or make decisions for himself; so when he is blown from the hand of his first owner onto the open sea, his fate (and survival) will be decided by chance. Chance, ocean currents, and the actions – brutal or tender – of the humans and animals whose paths he crosses.

As Lilo joins the huge fleet of flotsam travelling our globe, he becomes the driving force in a narrative which extends across hundreds of years, forwards and backwards in time. Felix Hodcroft’s imaginative, lyrical first novel is written for readers aged eleven to one-hundred-and-eleven; an epic modern fable that provides a sweeping description of the world (or worlds) in which we live, and proves that even a lilo – even the dream, or the memory of a lilo – can have an effect, significant or imperceptible, on the lives of all those it encounters.