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*



Genre: Literary Fiction

"Sarah Perry has the rare gift of committing the uncommittable to prose - that is to say: here is a writer who understands life." - Jessie Burton

"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

"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

"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." - Francis Spufford

"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." - Susan Stokes-Chapman