2024 Booker Prize (longlist)
**LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024**
A story of love and astronomy told over the course of twenty years through the lives of two improbable best friends
‘Gorgeous... Ethereal’ GUARDIAN
‘A book with cosmic reach' FINANCIAL TIMES
‘A romance worthy of Emily Brontë’ WALL STREET JOURNAL
‘A genre-bending novel of ideas’ TELEGRAPH
'Sarah Perry just gets better and better' INDEPENDENT
Thomas and Grace are fellow worshippers at the Baptist chapel in the small Essex town of Aldleigh. Though separated in age by three decades, the pair are kindred spirits – torn between their commitment to religion and their desire for more. But their friendship is threatened by the arrival of love.
Thomas falls for James Bower, who runs the local museum. Together they develop an obsession with the vanished nineteenth-century female astronomer Maria Veduva, said to haunt a nearby manor. Inspired by Maria, and the dawning realisation James may not reciprocate his feelings, Thomas finds solace studying the night skies. Could astronomy offer as much wonder as divine or earthly love?
Meanwhile Grace meets Nathan, a fellow sixth former who represents a different, wilder kind of life. They are drawn passionately together, but quickly pulled apart, casting Grace into the wider world and far away from Thomas.
In time, the mysteries of Aldleigh are revealed, bringing Thomas and Grace back to each other and to a richer understanding of love, of the nature of the world, and the sheer miracle of being alive.
*A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE GUARDIAN*
Genre: Literary Fiction
A story of love and astronomy told over the course of twenty years through the lives of two improbable best friends
‘Gorgeous... Ethereal’ GUARDIAN
‘A book with cosmic reach' FINANCIAL TIMES
‘A romance worthy of Emily Brontë’ WALL STREET JOURNAL
‘A genre-bending novel of ideas’ TELEGRAPH
'Sarah Perry just gets better and better' INDEPENDENT
Thomas and Grace are fellow worshippers at the Baptist chapel in the small Essex town of Aldleigh. Though separated in age by three decades, the pair are kindred spirits – torn between their commitment to religion and their desire for more. But their friendship is threatened by the arrival of love.
Thomas falls for James Bower, who runs the local museum. Together they develop an obsession with the vanished nineteenth-century female astronomer Maria Veduva, said to haunt a nearby manor. Inspired by Maria, and the dawning realisation James may not reciprocate his feelings, Thomas finds solace studying the night skies. Could astronomy offer as much wonder as divine or earthly love?
Meanwhile Grace meets Nathan, a fellow sixth former who represents a different, wilder kind of life. They are drawn passionately together, but quickly pulled apart, casting Grace into the wider world and far away from Thomas.
In time, the mysteries of Aldleigh are revealed, bringing Thomas and Grace back to each other and to a richer understanding of love, of the nature of the world, and the sheer miracle of being alive.
*A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE GUARDIAN*
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Sarah Perry has the rare gift of committing the uncommittable to prose - that is to say: here is a writer who understands life." - Jessie Burton
"Enlightenment is a complete masterwork - ambitious, crafted, truly artful. With its intersections of faith, physics, love and wisdom, I imagine we will be quoting lines from the novel for years to come. It holds page after page of luminous prose, playful intelligence, storyteller's wit and companionship, and the rarest compassion. Like the comets within, the reader travels headlong through the book's darkness and beauty, alongside universal laws and mysteries, aligning with both human matter and spirit. Sarah Perry is an extraordinary maker, of unique mind, sensibility and gifts; her writing is, as ever, lit by sheer brilliance." - Sarah Hall
"Gorgeous, galvanic, omniscient, intimate and eminently giving, Enlightenment is a novel to live with and learn by. As I read it, I felt housed by it. And, damn, did the house have skylights. Sarah Perry is a national treasure, and this is her best book yet." - Caoilinn Hughes
"A book in which everything is kindled into light by Sarah Perry's rapt, luminous attention: friendship, betrayal, faith, astronomy, the drizzle on the streets of Essex and the heavens above them." - Francis Spufford
"Once again Sarah Perry has gifted us with an ambitious story impeccably imagined in poignant prose; a beautifully nuanced novel of love in all its aspects, artfully marrying faith and science into something truly beguiling." - Susan Stokes-Chapman
"Enlightenment is a complete masterwork - ambitious, crafted, truly artful. With its intersections of faith, physics, love and wisdom, I imagine we will be quoting lines from the novel for years to come. It holds page after page of luminous prose, playful intelligence, storyteller's wit and companionship, and the rarest compassion. Like the comets within, the reader travels headlong through the book's darkness and beauty, alongside universal laws and mysteries, aligning with both human matter and spirit. Sarah Perry is an extraordinary maker, of unique mind, sensibility and gifts; her writing is, as ever, lit by sheer brilliance." - Sarah Hall
"Gorgeous, galvanic, omniscient, intimate and eminently giving, Enlightenment is a novel to live with and learn by. As I read it, I felt housed by it. And, damn, did the house have skylights. Sarah Perry is a national treasure, and this is her best book yet." - Caoilinn Hughes
"A book in which everything is kindled into light by Sarah Perry's rapt, luminous attention: friendship, betrayal, faith, astronomy, the drizzle on the streets of Essex and the heavens above them." - Francis Spufford
"Once again Sarah Perry has gifted us with an ambitious story impeccably imagined in poignant prose; a beautifully nuanced novel of love in all its aspects, artfully marrying faith and science into something truly beguiling." - Susan Stokes-Chapman
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