Enlightenment

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

Enlightenment is a story 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 for more. But their friendship is threatened by the arrival of romantic love.

Thomas falls for James Bower, who runs the local museum. Together they develop an obsession with the vanished nineteenth-century astronomer said to haunt a nearby manor, and whose identity might finally be revealed when a startling discovery is made. As Thomas fears a broken heart, he comes to find solace in astronomy: might it offer as much as earthly or even divine love? Meanwhile Grace meets Nathan, a fellow sixth former. They are drawn recklessly 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 their place in it.

This ambitious novel about love and faith and science is Sarah Perry's finest work to date.

'Hugely talented'
SARAH WATERS, author of FINGERSMITH

'Here is a writer who understands life'
JESSIE BURTON, author of THE MINIATURIST

©2024 Sarah Perry (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

  • It’s glorious, doing what her books do best: intertwining a love story with reams of esoteric learning and big ideas… This is a beautiful, memorable novel

    Observer, *Books to Look Out For 2024*

  • 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, author of The Electric Michelangelo

  • A genre-bending novel of ideas, ghosts and hidden histories… A heartfelt paean to the consolations of the sublime, where religion and science meet

    Telegraph

  • 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, author of Pandora

  • Sarah Perry just gets better and better…[this is] a fat, satisfying, grown-up novel – rich in plot, characters, ideas, structure, and atmosphere…[it] hangs together as a resplendent whole, shining like a night sky

    i news

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