Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, a deeply moving exploration of courage, love and liberation in the modern age.
In the summer of 1997, four people reach a turning point: Alice Valentine, who lies gravely ill in her West Country home; her two sons, one still searching for a sense of direction, the other fighting to keep his acting career and marriage afloat; and Laszlo Lazar, who leads a comfortable life in Paris yet is plagued by his memories of the 1956 Hungarian uprising. For each, the time has come to assess what matters in life, and all will be forced to take part in an act of liberation - though not necessarily the one foreseen.
A writer of astonishing gifts who peels his characters back to the quick with a language that never misses a note . . . his complex characters are unravelled with a depth and elegance that is breathtaking - Irish Times Books of the Year
Confirms his reputation as one of our most skilful chroniclers of the human heart and mind . . . a thoughtful, complex and satisfying work. - Sunday Times
Miller's use of imagery is always unexpected, sometimes astonishing . . . It is also impossible to put down - Independent on Sunday
Miller is a writer of such astonishing prose that wherever he takes his characters they speak a rare emotional truth. - Scotland on Sunday
Highly accomplished . . . Breathe in and enjoy. - Literary Review
[A] beautifully written novel . . . it grabs your attention to the last page. - Daily Express
Andrew Miller's first novel, Ingenious Pain, was published by Sceptre in 1997. It won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for the best foreign novel published in Italy. It has been followed by Casanova, Oxygen, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award in 2001, The Optimists, One Morning Like a Bird, Pure, which won the Costa Book of the Year Award 2011, The Crossing, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free and The Slowworm's Song.
Andrew Miller's novels have been published in translation in twenty countries. Born in Bristol in 1960, he currently lives in Somerset.