The Glutton

A New York Times EDITORS’ CHOICE | Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize | MOST ANTICIPATED by The Guardian • Paste Magazine • LitHub • The Millions • Library Journal

From the prizewinning author of The Manningtree Witches, a subversive historical novel set during the French Revolution, inspired bya young peasant boy turned showman, said to have been tormented and driven to murder by an all-consuming appetite.

‘Obscenely beautiful…Every sentence is gorgeous...Powerful and provocative.’ —The New York Times Book Review

‘This year, I found myself seeking one quality above all others from the books I read: escapism. And no book plunged me into another world quite so bracingly as The Glutton.’ —Vogue

1798, France. Nuns move along the dark corridors of a Versailles hospital where the young Sister Perpetu'' has been tasked with sitting with the patient who must always be watched. The man, gaunt, with his sallow skin and distended belly, is dying: they say he ate a golden fork, and that it’s killing him from the inside. But that’s not all—he is rumored to have done monstrous things in his attempts to sate an insatiable appetite…an appetite they say tortures him still.

Born in an impoverished village to a widowed young mother, Tarare was once overflowing with quiet affection: for the Baby Jesus and the many Saints, for his mother, for the plants and little creatures in the woods and fields around their house. He spends his days alone, observing the delicate charms of the countryside. But his world is not a gentle one—and soon, life as he knew it is violently upended. Tarare is pitched down a chaotic path through revolutionary France, left to the mercy of strangers, and increasingly, bottomlessly, ravenous.

This exhilarating, disquieting novel paints a richly imagined life for The Great Tarare, The Glutton of Lyon in 18th-century France: a world of desire, hunger and poverty; hope, chaos and survival. As in her cult hit The Manningtree Witches, Blakemore showcases her stunning lyricism and deep compassion for characters pushed to the edge of society in The Glutton, her most unputdownable work yet.


Genre: Historical

"Gorgeous and brutal, striking and wise, The Glutton is, at its core, a rich story of the lengths we will go to find belonging. A lyrical and propulsive reimagined historical rendering that will strike a deep cord with today's readers. Like nothing else I've ever read. Absolutely outstanding." - Chelsea Bieker

"Can there be any human frailty beyond this author's understanding? The Glutton is an extraordinary accomplishment, a truly horrible and truly glorious novel. I devoured it. AK Blakemore's intelligence is tempered by a profound and merciful human compassion, and the tragic making and breaking of Tarare is going to be with me for quite some time. Heartbreaking." - Annie Garthwaite

"The Glutton contains some of the most striking writing I have read in a very long time. An audacious and humane study of desire, pain and tenderness; a remarkable book about a remarkable subject by a remarkable writer." - Keiran Goddard

"An embarrassment of riches. A sensory assault fit to slap any reader awake with its gorgeous glut of baroque prose and wise, poised lessons on life, pleasure, class, desire, and love." - Kiran Millwood Hargrave