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Double Blind, by Edward St Aubyn, to be published on 18 March 2021

Edward St Aubyn’s much-anticipated new novel, Double Blind, is to be published in March 2021 and is his first major work since At Last, which concluded the internationally acclaimed Patrick Melrose series in 2011.

Packshot of Double Blind by Edward St Aubyn against a deep blue background, next to a portrait of Edward St Aubyn photographed against a woodland background.

Double Blind sees Edward St Aubyn in exciting new territory, looking at some of the most pressing questions of our times – in the fields of ecology, genetics, neuroscience and psychoanalysis – through the lens of fiction. With its large cast of characters, international canvas and intellectual scope, the novel shows St Aubyn on thrilling form.

“From the very first paragraph, inside the mind of a man walking though woodland, you know you’re in the world of St Aubyn,” says Kate Harvey, deputy publishing director at Harvill Secker. “But there’s a new expansiveness, a sense of looking outward. Within the fabric of a beautifully dramatized, swiftly paced novel there are rich seams of ideas in science and philosophy, explored in ways that are compassionate, playful and deeply thought through. It’s very much about our world, now: I think it will surprise readers as well as transport them. It’s stunning.”

Double Blind focuses on a trio of close friends, Olivia, Francis and Lucy, who are bound together early in the book by love and by shocking news, and unfolds over the course of a year that is transformative for them and their circle, in ways both intimate and life-shattering. Exploring themes of inheritance, determinism and freedom, it is a book about the headlong pursuit of knowledge – for pleasure, revelation, money, sanity, or survival – and the consequences of fleeing what we already know about others and ourselves.

The jacket for Double Blind was designed by Vintage Creative Director, Suzanne Dean, and illustrated by Rosanna Webster. Harvill Secker will publish in hardback, ebook and audio on 18 March 2021.

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