'One of the most pleasurable stylists alive . . . eden sees him at the top of his game' - Telegraph
eden opens with a summons. The gardeners of eden are called by their masters, the angels, to see a dead body. It is that of a bird, a creature who has strayed beyond the garden walls. The garden's inhabitants live an eternal and unblemished life - surrounded by bountiful fields, orchards and lakes, a place where the lord's bidding is done. But outside, where there is poverty and sickness and death, this bird has met a fate that is beyond their imagining.
For the gardeners, this summons is a warning. Because something is wrong in eden. Years after the fall of Adam and Eve, a woman called Tabi has escaped, and the angels fear further rebellion. They know gardener Ebon and Jamin, the angel with the broken wing, would both follow Tabi anywhere, would risk the world outside if only they could find her. Perhaps another fall is coming . . .
Deliciously intriguing and utterly propulsive, eden by Jim Crace is both a love story and a song to freedom, a novel that toys with creation myth and asks, where does authority lie? Who commands fear? And what - outside of hallowed ground - is an angel but a bird?
'One of our most original and inventive novelists' - Observer
Jim Crace is the prize-winning author of more than a dozen books, including Continent (winner of the 1986 Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize), Quarantine (1998 Whitbread Novel of the Year and shortlisted for the Booker Prize), Being Dead (winner of the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award), Harvest (shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize and winner of the International Dublin Literary Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize), The Melody and eden. He lives in Worcestershire.
Title: eden
Author: Crace, Jim
ISBN: 9781529062434
Binding:
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Publication Date: 2022-08-18
Number of Pages: 272
Weight: 0.3811 kg
No one is better at lending imaginative life to archetypes like this; he remains one of the most pleasurable stylists alive . . . [eden] sees him at the top of his game * Telegraph *
One of our most original and inventive novelists * Observer *
A fabulist, an open heart, an imagination in full flight . . . Crace is, quite simply, one of the great writers of our time -- Colum McCann, author of Apeirogon
Crace's world-building is rigorous - he blends his talents as a fabulist with his love of writing about a natural world * Financial Times *
Exquisite . . . Much of the book's pleasure lies in the sheer vigour with which he conveys the physicality of its ethereal elements * Daily Mail *
Powerful . . . the world-buidling in eden is impressive . . . Acclaimed for his stylish writing, Crace does not disappoint in his new book. The rhythmic, limpid prose, the easy cadence, seem particularly well suited to depictions of paradise * Irish Times *
Since announcing his retirement in 2013, Jim Crace has had more comebacks than Kanye West, something for which we should all be thankful * Spectator *
Crace exults in the art of storytelling * Guardian *
Jim Crace writes with great flair and inimitable imagination * Financial Times *
