Enlightenment: An NPR Best Book of the Year

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, Telegraph, Washington Post, The New Yorker. LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE. “Like A.S. Byatt’s Possession, Enlightenment is a baroque, genre-bending novel of ideas, ghosts and hidden histories. A richly layered epic....a heartfelt paean to the consolations of the sublime, where religion and science meet." -- Telegraph"Read it, then read it again. This is a book full of unexpected wonders." -- Literary ReviewFrom the author of The Essex Serpent, a dazzling novel of love and astronomy told over the course of twenty years through the lives of two improbable best friends.Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay have lived all their lives 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 to explore the world beyond their small Baptist community.It is two romantic relationships that will rend their friendship, and in the wake of this rupture, Thomas develops an obsession with a vanished nineteenth-century astronomer said to haunt a nearby manor, and Grace flees Aldleigh entirely for London. Over the course of twenty years, by coincidence and design, Thomas and Grace will find their lives brought back into orbit as the mystery of the vanished astronomer unfolds into a devastating tale of love and scientific pursuit. Thomas and Grace will ask themselves what it means to love and be loved, what is fixed and what is mutable, how much of our fate is predestined and written in the stars, and whether they can find their way back to each other.A thrillingly ambitious novel of friendship, faith, and unrequited love, rich in symmetry and symbolism, Enlightenment is a shimmering wonder of a book and Sarah Perry’s finest work to date.

and this circumscribed place

"An absorbing and affecting narrative of emotional turmoil and astronomical discovery...Ms. Perry’s characters

Shannon Rhoades, senior editor, Weekend Edition"A rich, surprising book that dazzles and dizzies the reader...recalls...the erudition of AS Byatt, the ungovernable romances of Iris Murdoch."

“presence.” Enlightenment is a tale of two friends, different generations but hailing from the same small Essex town and even smaller congregation. There’s a mystery involving a woman astronomer – but mainly there’s empathy for the complexities of people’s identities and belief systems, a sense of home and loads of gorgeous writing.

Sarah Waters on The Essex Serpent

“A novel to relish: a work of great intelligence and charm, by a hugely talented author.”

lush and fantastical, a wild Eden behind a garden gate...it’s part ghost story and part natural history lesson, part romance and part feminist parable. I found it so transporting that 48 hours after completing it, I was still resentful to be back home.”

“A novel of almost insolent ambition

Wall Street Journal

“Richly enjoyable...Ms. Perry writes beautifully and sometimes agreeably sharply...The Essex Serpent is a wonderfully satisfying novel. Ford Madox Ford thought the glory of the novel was its ability to make the reader think and feel at the same time. This one does just that.”

its manners, ideals and speech

“The most delightful heroine since Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice…Perry creates that delicate illusion of the best historical fiction: an authentic sense of the past

About the Author

Sarah Perry is the internationally bestselling author of The Essex Serpent, Melmoth, and After Me Comes the Flood. She lives in England.

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