Description

By (author) Spufford, Francis – Spufford, Francis; By (author) Spufford, Francis

Short /annotation
The Woolworths has a new delivery of aluminum saucepans, and a crowd has gathered to see the first new metal in a long time. Everything else has been melted down for the war effort.An instant later, the crowd is gone.

”Dazzling.” The Times”Exceptional.” Guardian”Brilliant.” Observer”Extraordinary.” Financial TimesWinner of the Encore Award 2022. Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021. November 1944. A German rocket strikes London, and five young lives are atomised in an instant.November 1944. That rocket never lands. A single second in time is altered, and five young lives go on – to experience all the unimaginable changes of the twentieth century.Because maybe there are always other futures. Other chances.From the best-selling, prize-winning author of Golden Hill, Light Perpetual is a story of the everyday, the miraculous and the everlasting. Ingenious and profound, full of warmth and beauty, it is a sweeping and intimate celebration of the gift of life.

Review quote
”Francis Spufford has one of the most original minds in contemporary literature.” – Nick Hornby

”[Spufford”s] writing crackles with energy and glee.” – Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

Biographical note
Francis Spufford is the author of five highly-praised works of non-fiction, most frequently described by reviewers as either ”bizarre” or ”brilliant”, and usually as both. His debut novel Golden Hill won the Costa First Novel Award, the RSL Ondaatje Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize, and was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Authors” Club Best First Novel Award and the British Book Awards Debut Novel of the Year. Light Perpetual, his second novel, won the Encore Award in 2022.In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He teaches writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and lives near Cambridge.

Promotional headline
From the best-selling, prize-winning author of Golden Hill, a novel of the everyday, the miraculous and the everlasting.

Review quote: previous edition
Dazzling … [Spufford is] one of the finest prose stylists of his generation. If his stories grip, his sentences practically glow.

Review quote: previous edition
Powerful . heartbreaking . [a] boundlessly rich novel.

Review quote: previous edition
A brilliant, attention-grabbing, capacious experiment with fiction.

Review quote: previous edition
Spufford is a tremendously varied and surprising writer … With exceptional care [he] catches the voices and hopes of five not-dead working-class south Londoners, and the people who change and shape them.

Review quote: previous edition
Moving and effortlessly absorbing.

Review quote: previous edition
The novel”s overarching feat is to resurrect with marvellous vitality not just its central five figures, but six transformative decades of London life.

Review quote: previous edition
Light Perpetual”s brilliance lies in the emotion and drama it wrings from the ordinary – but profoundly meaningful – experiences of its protagonists.

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A glorious act of literary resurrection.

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A tender, endlessly inventive novel.

Review quote: previous edition
Dazzling . Intimate, absorbing.

Review quote: previous edition
Radiant with hope and grace and courage . . . I loved it.

Review quote: previous edition
An extraordinary novel . . . [Spufford is] such a beautiful writer, casually stunning in his language and perceptions . . . So engrossing . . . Light Perpetual is a miracle, not only of ar