Summary
'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 Costa Book of the Year Award***
'Irresistibly compelling' Sunday Telegraph * 'Dazzling' Guardian * 'A work of beauty' The Times
An enthralling tale of an extraordinary year in pre-revolutionary Paris from the critically acclaimed author of Oxygen and The Slowworm's Song
Deep in the heart of Paris, its oldest cemetery is, by 1785, overflowing, tainting the very breath of those who live nearby. Into their midst comes Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young, provincial engineer charged by the king with demolishing it.
At first Baratte sees this as a chance to clear the burden of history, a fitting task for a modern man of reason. But before long, he begins to suspect that the destruction of the cemetery might be a prelude to his own.
PRAISE FOR ANDREW MILLER
'Unique, visionary, a master at unmasking humanity' Sarah Hall
'A highly intelligent writer, both exciting and contemplative' The Times
'A wonderful storyteller' Spectator
Andrew Miller's first novel, Ingenious Pain , was published by Sceptre in 1997. It won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for the best foreign novel published in Italy. It has been followed by Casanova , Oxygen , which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award in 2001, The Optimists , One Morning Like a Bird , Pure , which won the Costa Book of the Year Award 2011, The Crossing , Now We Shall Be Entirely Free and The Slowworm's Song .
Andrew Miller's novels have been published in translation in twenty countries. Born in Bristol in 1960, he currently lives in Somerset.
