Ingenious Pain

Author Andrew Miller
Narrator John Sackville
Publisher Hodder & Stoughton
Publish Date 11 July 2019
Run Time 10 hours and 55 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Historical fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: health and illness, Narrative theme: Identity / belonging.

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What to expect

The extraordinary prize-winning debut from Andrew Miller. Winner of the IMPAC Award and James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

At the dawn of the Enlightenment, James Dyer 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 against smallpox, he meets his nemesis and saviour.

(P)2019 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Critics Review

A wild adventure through 18th-century England and Russia, medicine, madness, landscape and weather, rendered in prose of consummate beauty

Independent

A really remarkable first novel, original, powerfully written . . . Miller’s narrative is gripping and his imagination extraordinary

Sunday Telegraph

Astoundingly good . . . it shines like a beacon

The Times

Timeless and thought-provoking . . . it is something very rare in modern fiction, a true work of art

Spectator

Gripping . . . a dazzling debut

Observer

Dazzling . . . Miller tackles notions of mortality and humanity to brilliant effect . . . truly wonderful

Evening Standard

An extraordinary first novel . . . one is constantly delighted with strange and vivid imagery, fresh and startling metaphors, flashes of insight, deft twists of plot and resonant variations on dominant themes . . . a mature novel of ideas soaked in the sensory detail of its turbulent times

New York Times Book Review

Exceptionally intelligent and elegant . . . remarkable for its feeling and its humane sensibility

Sunday Times

A true rarity: a debut novel which is original, memorable, engrossing and subtle

Guardian

Strange, unsettling, sad, beautiful and profound . . . the sense of period is brilliantly handled

Literary Review

More than merits comparison with the likes of Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus and Patrick Süskind’s Perfume . . . a blistering debut

Time Out

The novel’s evocation of the period, down to the finest detail, is thoroughly confident . . . a startling novel

Independent on Sunday

A finely wrought and provocative novel

Daily Telegraph

Impressive

Mail on Sunday

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