Enlightenment

Unlikely best friends Thomas and Grace are bound together by questions of faith, love and astronomy in this dazzling summer read from the #1 bestselling author. 
READERS HAVE FALLEN IN LOVE WITH ENLIGHTENMENT: 
 ‘Vibrates with wonder’ 
 ‘I absolutely loved it’ 
 ‘Full of magic’ 
 ‘Exquisite…strange and wonderful and unpredictable’ 
 ‘This book tore my heart apart then put it back together again’ 
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 religion and their desire to explore the world. But their friendship is ruptured by the arrival of love. 
Over the course of twenty years, Thomas and Grace will find their lives brought back into orbit as a devastating story of passion and scientific adventure unfolds and Aldleigh’s unique mysteries are revealed. 
‘It’s glorious… A beautiful, memorable novel’ OBSERVER 
‘Sarah Perry just gets better and better’ INDEPENDENT 
‘Absorbing… A romance worthy of Emily Brontë’ WALL STREET JOURNAL 
‘Gorgeous…ethereal’ GUARDIAN 
‘Sarah Perry creates worlds to disappear into… Beautiful, vivid’ BBC 
*LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024* 
 *A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE GUARDIAN, DAILY TELEGRAPH AND DAILY MAIL*

Gauzy and unhurried, a genteel novel of inner space. It’s luxuriously – defiantly – old-fashioned... Perry has always produced gorgeous prose, and she has found a new, ethereal register in this book

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

A rich, surprising book that dazzles and dizzies the reader. It balances reason with belief, excels in both ideas and action, and, though firmly placed in Perry’s homeland of Essex, it’s a book with cosmic reach

Extraordinary and ambitious... What Perry has done in this layered, intelligent and moving book is to construct a kind of quantum novel, one that asks us to question conventional linear narratives and recognise instead what is ever-present in Perry’s luminous vision of Essex: truth, beauty and love

Dazzling… Faith and science can inspire out-of-time cosmic wonder, but as Perry beautifully demonstrates here, so, too, can the novel

Sarah Perry just gets better and better… 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

Gorgeously written… A beautiful, compassionate and memorable book, one that will repay reading more than once

Perry has returned with another cracker. A dazzling novel, full of big ideas about religion and science, love and friendship

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

Perry’s prose oozes with the richness of its Essex setting

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

An ambitious, poetic exploration of cosmic forces, love and faith. Defiantly old-fashioned, touched by the shades of AS Byatt and Wilkie Collins

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

A book about grace, written with a faith in awe and in elemental love, Enlightenment is full of both ordinary and extraordinary wonders. Sarah Perry has brought all her wide empathy and joy to this novel: its characters are rich and vivid and tenderly human. Enlightenment is not only a book that seems to redeem its world, but to redeem its readers. It is a gift

Seán Hewitt, author of All Down Darkness Wide

A book in which everything is kindled into light by Sarah Perry’s rapt, luminous attention: friendship, betrayal, faith, astronomy, the drizzle on the streets of Essex and the heavens above them

No novel is ever perfect, but this one comes close. Read it, then read it again. This is a book full of unexpected wonders

John Burnside, author A Lie About My Father

Attuned to the fragile intimacies between lovers and friends, and acutely aware of the devastating cruelties that are routinely meted out between strangers, Enlightenment is a mesmerizing work of wondering and wonder. Filled with quiet epiphanies into the intricacies of the human condition filtered through the lens of science and religion, this is a profound and moving novel that invites the reader to regard the world around them with a more compassionate gaze

Perry has some superb set-pieces throughout the novel, almost in sync with the periodicity of the celestial bodies… A genuine talent… An immaculate book

Gorgeous, galvanic, omniscient, intimate and eminently giving, Enlightenment is a novel to live with and learn by. As I read it, I felt housed by it. And, damn, did the house have skylights. Sarah Perry is a national treasure, and this is her best book yet

Caoilinn Hughes, author of Orchid and the Wasp

Perry seamlessly blends an absorbing mystery with her principal characters’ personal conflicts to create a narrative as propulsive as it is emotionally resonant. Swiftly sketched but fully realized secondary characters give the novel a social texture more commonly found in Victorian literature, an impression bolstered by Perry’s intricately layered prose. Much of the story is sad, but a radiant finale suggests reconciliation and renewal. Thoughtful, sensitive and beautifully written

Perry’s enchanting latest blends a ghost story with a meditation on astronomy and loneliness anchored on the periodic reappearances of Halley’s Comet. Perry’s affection for her characters, even in their most flawed moments, adds to the fullness of their realization, as she makes it abundantly clear that the faults and frailties that distinguish them lie not in the stars but in themselves. Perry magnificently evokes the wonder of the cosmos

Perry's stunning, multilayered novel returns to the Essex countryside. Her shimmering prose draws readers gradually into the story, until suddenly, we are captivated by the rich, psychologically complex, and intimate characters as they grapple philosophically with issues of faith, religion, science, astronomy, and love in all its guises. With brilliant storytelling, Perry’s novel of dichotomies portrays how elliptical our lives are - very much like the movement of the stars

With its lush prose and thought-provoking themes, Enlightenment reaffirms Perry's place as one of contemporary fiction's brightest stars

With luminous prose and rich characters, you’ll get lost in the pages

A wonderfully rich whirl of characters, plot, language and ideas… Told in Sarah’s lucid yet luminous style the story seems to glow from the page

A remarkable new novel… jam-packed with big ideas, exquisitely written, and characterized by a dark narrative drive… It’s as good a novel as you’ll read this year

Perry’s juicy fourth novel seems to me pretty much the perfect summer read: strange, wondrous and, crucially, a book that refuses to be gobbled up in one sitting… Pretty much every unhurried sentence is a delight

This celestial-minded novel…is quintessential Perry. A richly layered epic

The author of The Essex Serpent just gets better and better: here is one of those rich, textured novels with a story to really sink into

Soul-satisfyingly substantial subjects are handled in gorgeously shaped sentences

Sarah Perry…creates worlds to disappear into, combining complex ideas and richly layered stories with beautiful, vivid prose. Her latest book is possibly her most ambitious yet

As rich and satisfying as any plum pudding

In Enlightenment [Perry] tracks patterns of unrequited love and cosmic wonder against the path of the Hale-Bopp comet, all done with her customary grace and lashings of atmosphere

[Perry is] one of a handful of British novelists who can anatomise the byways and pathologies of religious faith with real understanding and still find startling things to say about grace and miracle

Sarah Perry is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Enlightenment, Melmoth, The Essex Serpent and After Me Comes the Flood, and the non-fiction Death of an Ordinary Man and Essex Girls. She is a winner of the Waterstones Book of the Year Award and the British Book of the Year Award. Enlightenment was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024 and her other work has been nominated for major literary prizes including the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Folio Prize and the Costa Novel Award. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

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 religion and their desire to explore the world. But their friendship is ruptured by the arrival of love.Over the course of twenty years, Thomas and Grace will find their lives brought back into orbit as a devastating story of passion and scientific adventure unfolds and Aldleigh’s unique mysteries are revealed.

Sarah Perry

What a luminously beautiful book, an instant classic. Every page is suffused with such honesty, tenderness and love. Few people have written about dying with such clear-eyed accuracy and immense humanity. Never flinching, never sugar-coating, Sarah has captured brilliantly how caring for someone you love in their final days can upend everything you thought you knew about living. Please read this book. It may very well change how you live

Sarah Perry’s Death of an Ordinary Man is unflinching yet generous, a book that deals with grief and loss and death with acute honesty and without a trace of euphemism, with no retreat into sentimentality. It is scrupulous in its intent and in the writing and by the end I was left shaken, deeply moved. It is beautiful, a work of love and grace

I have just sat and read Sarah's wonderful book, nodding and agreeing with so many tiny details that she has noticed and reflected on with a writer's eye and a loving daughter-in-law's heart. Just beautiful. I hope her luminous writing will console and encourage her readers, all of whom are mortals. This book is a slice of reality that comforts even as it confronts us. It is a book filled with love and human frailty, and I was spellbound

It’s very simple – a description of her father-in-law’s final illness and death – but it is beautiful and profound and completely gripping… The idea of a pain-free, comfortable birth or a pain-free, comfortable death is as misleading as the idea of a pain free, comfortable life. Death, even a good death, will be hard work at time and must be borne both by the person dying and by those around them. And that is natural and right, and something we learn by living a life

I have not been moved like this by a book in a very long time. Death of an Ordinary Man is a masterful piece of writing. It gives dignity and weight to something as ordinary, as extraordinary, as death. By redeeming a common experience in all its intimacy, panic, disorientation and unexpected light, this book will be a lifeline for so many people. Those of us who have witnessed the death of a loved one will thank Sarah Perry for witnessing us in return.

Sarah Perry’s Death of an Ordinary Man is an act of devotion, not only to her father-in-law but to the art of memoir. What makes this book incredibly special is its intimate attentiveness to dying – how it transforms the subject and their witnesses – in Perry’s intelligent, precise and radiant prose. To read this book is a privilege, a gift on the craft of dying. I know I’ll reach for it when I need both courage and consolation

Haunting, mesmerising, fiercely intelligent and deeply humane, Sarah Perry's Death of an Ordinary Man is as gripping as any thriller, an exploration of the ways in which every ordinary life and death are unrepeatable, unfathomable, extraordinary

[A] deeply affecting memoir… What grips in these pages, and drives the writing, is Perry’s tremendous sense of rhythm and pace... We cannot but be somewhat changed by this remarkable book

As singular and stunning as I knew it would be. Through reading it, I felt I came to know David, and also that I came to know myself better. I could see the world differently afterwards and could feel a little more at peace with it. Only the very best books do that. Sarah is in a league of her own as a writer – I don't know how she does it.

It’s not easy to account for what makes this book so special…What makes this book gem-like is that it succeeds in conveying the reality of death as this monumental, mythic thing that coexists surreally with the mundane world of bin collections and neighbours hanging out their washing... [Perry] has written beautifully and compellingly about the life of an unexceptional man, and an experience that is coming to all of us – and shown that there is no such thing as an ordinary life, or an ordinary death

Honest, brave, piercing and most of all true... This is a necessary book, since we will all be touched by its concerns

So tender and poignant, Death of an Ordinary Man made me realise how little I've read about death, how unprepared for it we all are, how it takes us to places we didn't know about, and once we have been there we are changed forever. A beautiful book that every human would do well to read

This may appear to be a book about death, but really it is a love letter to life that resonates far beyond its own pages. Simply wonderful

In her vignettes of an ‘ordinary’ life – which, of course, is nothing of the sort and shines with specificity – she conjures a light that, though passed, can still illuminate whatever it touches

A thoughtful meditation on death in the 21st century and a humane tribute to a loved one

Both loving and unsparing… Perry’s writing is superb

One of the best books I have read about human health. It is also one of the toughest

Perry… captures both the strangeness of living and the inevitability of death

A must-read for anyone crippled by their fear of losing a loved one

'Please read this book. It may very well change how you live' Rachel Clarke 
 
'I was spellbound' Kathryn Mannix 
 
Death of an Ordinary Man is an unforgettable account of this universal aspect of life. It is not a book about grief: it is a book about dying, and it is a book about family, and care and love. 
 
Sarah Perry's father-in-law David died in the autumn of 2022, only nine days after a cancer diagnosis. Until then he'd been a healthy and happy man: he loved stamp collecting, fish and chips, comic novels, his local church, and the Antiques Roadshow. He was in some ways a very ordinary man, but as he began to die, it became clear how extraordinary he was. 
 
Sarah and her husband Robert nursed David themselves at home, eventually with the help of carers and visiting nurses. They bathed and cleaned and dressed him, comforted him in pain, sat with him through waking and sleeping, talked to him, sang to him, prayed with him. Day by day and hour by hour, they witnessed what happens to the body and spirit as death approaches and finally arrives. 
 
'By the end I was left shaken, deeply moved' Christos Tsiolkas 
 
'This book will be a lifeline for so many people' Seán Hewitt 
 
'To read this book is a privilege, a gift on the craft of dying' Amy Key

Sarah Perry

Praise for Death of an Ordinary Man

What a luminously beautiful book, an instant classic. Every page is suffused with such honesty, tenderness and love. Few people have written about dying with such clear-eyed accuracy and immense humanity. Nev ...

Sarah Perry’s Death of an Ordinary Man is unflinching yet generous, a book that deals with grief and loss and death with acute honesty and without a trace of euphemism, with no retreat into sentimental ...

I have just sat and read Sarah's wonderful book, nodding and agreeing with so many tiny details that she has noticed and reflected on with a writer's eye and a loving daughter-in-law's heart. Just beautiful. I ho ...

What a luminously beautiful book, an instant classic. Every page is suffused with such honesty, tenderness and love. Few people have written about dying with such clear-eyed accuracy and immense humanity. Nev ...

Sarah Perry’s Death of an Ordinary Man is unflinching yet generous, a book that deals with grief and loss and death with acute honesty and without a trace of euphemism, with no retreat into sentimental ...

I have just sat and read Sarah's wonderful book, nodding and agreeing with so many tiny details that she has noticed and reflected on with a writer's eye and a loving daughter-in-law's heart. Just beautiful. I ho ...

What a luminously beautiful book, an instant classic. Every page is suffused with such honesty, tenderness and love. Few people have written about dying with such clear-eyed accuracy and immense humanity. Nev ...

Sarah Perry’s Death of an Ordinary Man is unflinching yet generous, a book that deals with grief and loss and death with acute honesty and without a trace of euphemism, with no retreat into sentimental ...

I have just sat and read Sarah's wonderful book, nodding and agreeing with so many tiny details that she has noticed and reflected on with a writer's eye and a loving daughter-in-law's heart. Just beautiful. I ho ...

Books by Sarah Perry

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter