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THE NEW SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER FROM THE #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE ESSEX SERPENT

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´Hugely readable and profoundly important ... Perry´s masterly piece of postmodern gothic is one of the great achievements of our century´
The Observer

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE

OBSERVER FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018

´Beautiful, devastating, brilliant´
Marian Keyes

´Astonishingly dark ... exquisitely balanced´
Francis Spufford

´Packs a punch of atmosphere, creepiness, fear and melancholy´
Susan Hill

´Mythic, ominous and sensitively human´
Frances Hardinge

´Richly atmospheric, daring and surprising´
Melissa Harrison

´Striking and brave, ... moving and terribly beautiful´
Sam Guglani

Oh my friend, won´t you take my hand - I´ve been so lonely!

One winter night in Prague, Helen Franklin meets her friend Karel on the street.

Agitated and enthralled, he tells her he has come into possession of a mysterious old manuscript, filled with personal testimonies that take them from 17th-century England to wartime Czechoslovakia, the tropical streets of Manila, and 1920s Turkey. All of them tell of being followed by a tall, silent woman in black, bearing an unforgettable message.

Helen reads its contents with intrigue, but everything in her life is about to change.

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Sarah Perry stands out as an exhilaratingly bold storyteller Mail on Sunday

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Perry, Sarah
Sarah Perry was born in Essex in 1979. She has been the writer in residence at Gladstone´s Library and the UNESCO World City of Literature Writer in Residence in Prague. After Me Comes the Flood, her first novel, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Folio Prize, and won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award in 2014. Her latest novel, The Essex Serpent, was a number one bestseller in hardback, Waterstones Book of the Year 2016, the British Book Awards Book of the Year 2017, was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and Dylan Thomas Award, and longlisted for the Bailey´s Women´s Prize for Fiction 2017. Her work has been translated into twenty languages. She lives in Norwich.

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