Nonesuch
Francis Spufford
We send all orders via Royal Mail: within the UK, choose from 1st Class, 2nd Class or Special Delivery; for the rest of the world, International Standard or International Tracked. Delivery and packaging charges are calculated automatically at the checkout.
To collect orders in person from the Bookshop, choose Click and Collect at the checkout.
From the publisher
A spell-binding fantasy novel set in the Blitz, from the author of Golden Hill.
'What a joy! A novel with endless ingenuity and enormous heart.' Kaliane Bradley
'His Dark Materials meets the Blitz.' Observer
'One of the finest prose stylists of his generation.' The Times
'My god can he write.' Richard Osman
It's the summer of 1939. London is on the brink of catastrophic war. Iris Hawkins, an ambitious young woman in the stuffy world of City finance, has a chance encounter with Geoff, a technical whizz at the BBC's nascent television unit.
What was supposed to be one night of abandon draws her instead into an adventure of otherworldly pursuit - into a reality where time bends, spirits can be summoned, and history hangs by a thread. Soon there are Nazi planes overhead. But Iris has more to contend with than the terrors of the Blitz. Over the rooftops of burning London, in the twisted passages between past and present, a fascist fanatic is travelling with a gun in her hand.
And only Iris can stop her from altering the course of history forever.
His Dark Materials meets the Blitz: the deep satisfactions of children's literature reclaimed for adults who still want stories in which the world is wondrous.
Observer
What a joy! Bejewelled with dazzling prose, propulsive as a rocket, mandala-complex in its worldbuilding, and corkscrewing jubilantly through fantasy, history, romance, occultism, adventure and the wartime Stock Exchange, Nonesuch is a novel with endless ingenuity and an enormous heart.
Kaliane Bradley
Nonesuch salts actual history with the conventions of the fantastic in a way that thrills me, but by now that feels like a trademark of Spufford's writing. Here are the most interesting and terrifying angels and the human characters, too, are so full of life and feeling they practically set fire to the pages as you turn them.
Kelly Link
I feel like I've been waiting all my adult life for Nonesuch to come along: a book that scoops up all the wonder and hope and pleasure of the Narnia novels, and pours it into a story for grown-up. The book itself is a kind of enchantment, as powerful as any of the great and harrowing spells cast within its pages, and I was entirely ensorcelled. You simply. Must. Read. This. Book.
Joe Hill
I raced through this . . . Francis Spufford could write about pretty much anything and make it your cup of tea.
Mark Haddon
The balance of historical realism and fantasy is handled with a degree of mastery and attention to detail that is far more convincing than it probably ought to be - and that suggests further complications to come. The novel ends with the tantalizing note ''to be continued'', promising a second volume that I suspect most readers, like myself, will want to see *right now*.
Locus Magazine