From small-town England to the Russian court of the 17th century in the company of a man who can feel no pain. From an object of curiosity to a great surgeon himself we learn much of the science and the philosophy of the period as we travel with this extraordinary man in a very skilful, densely written, complicated novel. Challenging and intelligent, it is a rewarding read.
***Out now: Andrew Miller's new novel THE LAND IN WINTER***
'ANDREW MILLER'S WRITING IS A SOURCE OF WONDER AND DELIGHT' Hilary Mantel
'ONE OF OUR MOST SKILFUL CHRONICLERS OF THE HUMAN HEART AND MIND' Sunday Times
Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award
'Astoundingly good' The Times
'Dazzling' Observer
'Timeless' Spectator
The extraordinary prize-winning debut from Andrew Miller - a highly imaginative, atmospheric first novel
At the dawn of the Enlightenment, a man is born unable to feel pain. A source of wonder and scientific curiosity as a child, he rises through the ranks of Georgian society to become a brilliant surgeon. Yet as a human being he fails, for he can no more feel love and compassion than pain. Until, en route to St Petersburg to inoculate the Empress Catherine, he meets his nemesis and saviour.
PRAISE FOR ANDREW MILLER
'Unique, visionary, a master at unmasking humanity' Sarah Hall
'A writer of very rare and outstanding gifts' Independent on Sunday
'A highly intelligent writer, both exciting and contemplative' The Times
'A wild adventure through 18th-century England and Russia, medicine, madness, landscape and weather, rendered in prose of consummate beauty.' - Elspeth Barker, Books of the Year, Independent
'A timeless and thought-provoking fable about human nature...It is something very rare in modern fiction, a true work of art.' - Spectator
'Strange, unsettling, sad, beautiful, and profound' - Literary Review
Author
About Andrew Miller
Andrew Miller was born in Bristol in 1960. He has lived in Spain, Japan, Ireland and France, and currently lives in Somerset. His first novel, INGENIOUS PAIN, was published by Sceptre in 1997 and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour prize in Italy. His second novel, CASANOVA, was published in 1998, followed by OXYGEN, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award and the Booker Prize in 2001, and THE OPTIMISTS, published in 2005.
