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Dark is the Morning
- Author
- Rupert Thomson
- Narrator
- Rupert Thomson
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date
- 7 May 2026
- Run Time
- 6 hours 59 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
Sometimes love isn’t where you belong
In a mountain village in the Abruzzo region of Italy, Gino, a troubled young man, realises that his childhood sweetheart Franca can give his life the happiness and stability he needs. They seem made for each other, and move to a remote house in the countryside - but there is something in Franca’s past that haunts Gino.
Descending into pathological jealousy and resentment towards a married man who had been Franca’s lover, Gino is unable to stop himself imagining the worst, and embarks on a violent path that has catastrophic consequences.
Shifting between tenderness and paranoia, beauty and tragedy, this is an extraordinary novel from one of the UK’s most unpredictable and celebrated writers.
Critics Review
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A wonderfully moody, moving novel, shot through with sadness and with strangeness, and with a simmering power entirely its own.
Sarah Waters
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Lyrical, intense, and haunting, Thomson's Italian psychodrama displays incredible narrative mastery and has the elegance and fluency of a fable. So beautifully written.
Chloe Aridjis
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Beautiful and seething. I liked it deeply.
Claire-Louise Bennet
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An extraordinary writer
Samantha Morton
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Utterly gripping. There isn’t a writer on the planet who mines the precariousness of the human condition with such terrifying power and clarity.
Julie Myerson
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Gripping
Literary Review
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A meticulously structured novel about concealed pasts and how we overcome them – or don’t ... This is a story where you can both stand back and admire the architecture, and live vividly inside it like the characters themselves.
The Critic
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Thomson's skill is to layer his trademark style of stunned, post-traumatic prose with the seething energy of gossip and paranoia ... It is perhaps the ideal holiday read: frictionless at the level of the sentence; stealthy, romantic and utterly unpredictable in every other way.
Financial Times
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Thomson captures with remarkable precision the exhilaration and vulnerability of falling in love ... A novel of unsettling power.
The TLS
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Compelling ... an unsettling fable of a romance infected by obsessive jealousy. Themes of love, magic and madness play out with Rapunzel vibes, wreathed in woodsmoke.
The Gloss
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A beautifully wrought, achingly sad exposition of flawed and frail humanity
Saga
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A complex, heady love story ... A terrific, potent novel by one of David Bowie's favourite writers.
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User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Rupert Thomson
- Narrator
- Rupert Thomson
- Duration
- 6 hours 59 minutes
- Release Date
- 7 May 2026
- ISBN
- 9781035909605
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Genre
- Fiction: literary and general non-genre
Synopsis
Bloomsbury presents Dark is the Morning, written and read by Rupert Thomson.Sometimes love isn’t where you belongIn a mountain village in the Abruzzo region of Italy, Gino, a troubled young man, realises that his childhood sweetheart Franca can give his life the happiness and stability he needs. They seem made for each other, and move to a remote house in the countryside - but there is something in Franca’s past that haunts Gino.Descending into pathological jealousy and resentment towards a married man who had been Franca’s lover, Gino is unable to stop himself imagining the worst, and embarks on a violent path that has catastrophic consequences. Shifting between tenderness and paranoia, beauty and tragedy, this is an extraordinary novel from one of the UK’s most unpredictable and celebrated writers.
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