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From the author of THE ESSEX SERPENT comes a dazzlingly inventive and deeply moving novel that speaks urgently to our times

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Twenty years ago Helen Franklin did something she cannot forgive herself for, and she has spent every day since barricading herself against its memory. But the sheltered life she has crafted for herself is about to change.

A strange manuscript has come into her possession, and its contents have the power to unravel every strand of her fragile safety net. It is filled with testimonies from the darkest chapters of human history, which all record sightings of a tall, silent woman in black, with unblinking eyes and bleeding feet: Melmoth, the loneliest being in the world. Condemned to walk the Earth forever, she tries to beguile the guilty and lure them away for a lifetime wandering alongside her.

Everyone that Melmoth seeks out must make a choice: to live with what they´ve done, or be led into the darkness. Despite her scepticism, Helen can´t stop reading, or shake the feeling that someone or something is watching her. As her past finally catches up with her, she too must choose which path to take.

Exquisitely written, and gripping until the very last page, this is a masterpiece of moral complexity, asking us profound questions about mercy, redemption, and how to make the best of our conflicted world.

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A novel that manages that vanishingly rare feat - being at once hugely readable and profoundly important ... Melmoth is a good book, one that, for all its uncanny shudders, comes from a place of decency and good faith, a beacon against the darkest times. Perry´s masterly piece of postmodern gothic is one of the great achievements of our century and deserves all the prizes and praise that will be heaped upon it Alex Preston Observer

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Perry, Sarah
Sarah Perry was born in Essex in 1979. She has been the writer in residence at Gladstone´s Library and the UNESCO World City of Literature Writer in Residence in Prague. After Me Comes the Flood, her first novel, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Folio Prize, and won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award in 2014. Her latest novel, The Essex Serpent, was a number one bestseller in hardback, Waterstones Book of the Year 2016, the British Book Awards Book of the Year 2017, was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and Dylan Thomas Award, and longlisted for the Bailey´s Women´s Prize for Fiction 2017. Her work has been translated into twenty languages. She lives in Norwich.

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