Francis Spufford

** Includes the first chapter from the hugely anticipated new novel from Francis Spufford, Cahokia Jazz. **Dazzling.The TimesExceptional.GuardianBrilliant.ObserverExtraordinary.Financial TimesA miracle.Wall Street Journal*Winner of the RSL Encore Award**Longlisted for the Booker Prize*November 1944. A German rocket strikes London, and five young lives are atomised in an instant.November 1944. That rocket never lands. A single second in time is altered, and five young lives go on - to experience all the unimaginable changes of the twentieth century.Because maybe there are always other futures. Other chances.From the best-selling, prize-winning author of Golden Hill, Light Perpetual is a story of the everyday, the miraculous and the everlasting. Ingenious and profound, full of warmth and beauty, it is a sweeping and intimate celebration of the gift of life.

Una tarda plujosa de novembre, un jove foraster de bona presència, tot just desembarcat, es presenta a la porta d’unes oficines al carrer Golden Hill: és el senyor Smith, amable, encisador, però estr

Ambientada en Nueva York, en 1746, cuando todavía era una pequeña ciudad en un cabo de la isla de Manhattan, Golden Hill es una asombrosa primera novela llena de aventuras. Una tarde lluviosa de noviembre, un atractivo joven desembarca y se acerca a la oficina contable de la calle Golden Hill. El señor Smith es amable y encantador pero está decidido a levantar sospechas sobre quién es, qué es o qué quiere ser. En su bolsillo tiene lo que parece una letra de cambio de mil libras pero no explica por qué la tiene, ni de dónde viene, ni lo que está planeando hacer en las colonias con tanto dinero. Situada en una generación anterior a la de la Revolución Americana, pinta la imagen irresistible de una Nueva York mucho más provocadora de lo que fue inmediatamente después.

Unapologetic is a brief, witty, personal, sharp-tongued defence of Christianity, taking on Dawkins'' The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens'' God is Not Great.Its argument is that Christianity is recognisable, drawing on the deep and deeply ordinary vocabulary of human feeling, satisfying those who believe by offering a ruthlessly realistic account of the bits of our lives advertising agencies prefer to ignore. It''s a book for believers who are fed up with being patronised, for non-believers curious about how faith can possibly work in the twenty-first century, and for anyone who feels there is something indefinably wrong, literalistic, anti-imaginative and intolerant about the way the case for atheism is now being made.

November 1944. A German rocket strikes London, and five young lives are atomised in an instant.November 1944. That rocket never lands. A single second in time is altered, and five young lives go on - to experience all the unimaginable changes of the twentieth century.Because maybe there are always other futures. Other chances.From the best-selling, prize-winning author of Golden Hill, Light Perpetual is a story of the everyday, the miraculous and the everlasting. Ingenious and profound, full of warmth and beauty, it is a sweeping and intimate celebration of the gift of life.

Una tendra i bella celebració del regal de la vida.Novembre del 1944. Una bomba de la Luftwaffe està a punt d'impactar contra la ciutat de Londres, truncant, en un sol instant, la vida de cinc nens.

Utterly immersive' Spectator'Thrilling' Financial Times'Unlike anything else you will read this year' Daily Express'A classic of alternative history' Observer'A delight' Sunday TelegraphA Guardian, Financial Times, New Statesman and Times Literary Supplement Book of the YearA thrilling tale of murder and mystery in a city where history has run a little differently -- from the bestselling author of Golden Hill.In a city that never was, in an America that never was, on a snowy night at the end of winter, two detectives find a body on the roof of a skyscraper.It's 1922, and Americans are drinking in speakeasies, dancing to jazz, stepping quickly to the tempo of modern times. But in this 1922, things are a little different. Beside the Mississippi, the ancient city of Cahokia lives on - a teeming industrial metropolis, containing every race and creed. Among them, peace holds. Just about. But that body on the roof is about to spark off a week that will spill the city's secrets, and bring it, against a soundtrack of wailing clarinets and gunfire, either to destruction or rebirth.

What would you find if you went back and reread all of your favourite books from childhood? Francis Spufford discovers both delight and sadness, in this memoir. Re-reading and re-living these books, and investigating their literary origins and rich histories, Francis Spufford reveals what it was like to be an obsessive reader as a child. As the book unfolds, so too he gradually uncovers his own childhood and his unique reason for taking refuge in stories from a world full of unbearable knowledge.

Érase una vez, hace muchos años, un lejano país entero, pueblo y dirigentes, campesinos y ciudadanos, vivió en un cuento de hadas. El truco mágico se llamaba "economía planificada" y con él se iba a conseguir el milagro de la abundancia. Las cosechas, la produccion, los bienes y los servicios crecerian año tras año, con una eficiencia y una fiabilidad que nunca iba a conseguir el capitalismo. Y durante unos años maravillosos, a finales de la decada de 1950, parecia posible.Este libro, mitad novela, mitad ensayo, mitad comedia de ideas, relata ese instante magico en que la utopia del comunismo sovietico tomo por asalto la realidad. Un instante breve, bajo el mandato de Nikita Jruchov, cuando Moscu iba a brillar mas que Manhattan, y los Lada tendrian mejores motores que los Porsche. Es un relato nuevo, ambicioso como un Sputnik, encantador como la sonrisa de una azafata de Aeroflot, brillante como una copa de champan sovietico.

Una tierna y bella celebración del regalo de la vida.Una tierna y bella celebración del regalo de la vida.Noviembre del 1944. Una bomba de la Luftwaffe está a punto de impactar contra la ciudad de Londres, truncando, en un solo instante, la vida de cinco niños.Noviembre del 1944. Esa bomba nunca llega a impactar contra su objetivo. Una porcion infima de tiempo ha sido alterada, y la vida de esos cinco niños prosigue su curso, adentrandose en los profundos cambios que moldearon la segunda mitad del siglo xx.Porque quiza siempre haya otros futuros posibles. Otras posibilidades.Luz perpetua es una historia de nuestro dia a dia, de lo magico y maravilloso que hay en la cotidianeidad y su esencia imperecedera.Una novela fascinante y audazmente inventiva que traza las infinitas posibilidades de cinco vidas en los bulliciosos barrios del Londres del siglo xx.Nominado al Booker del 2021, ganador del Encore Award 2022 y elegido como uno de los libros del año porThe Sunday Times, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Observer, The Daily Mail yThe New York Times.Una autentica obra maestra.The GuardianUn milagro, no solo en su concepcion puramente artistica, sino por toda la empatia que desprende.The Wall Street JournalIntima. Absorbente. Tecnicamente brillante.BooksellerDe una capacidad de fabulacion deslumbrante.The Sunday Times

Ambientada en Nueva York, en 1746, cuando todavía era una pequeña ciudad en un cabo de la isla de Manhattan, Golden Hill es una asombrosa primera novela llena de aventuras. Una tarde lluviosa de noviembre, un atractivo joven desembarca y se acerca a la oficina contable de la calle Golden Hill. El señor Smith es amable y encantador pero esta decidido a levantar sospechas sobre quien es, que es o que quiere ser. En su bolsillo tiene lo que parece una letra de cambio de mil libras pero no explica por que la tiene, ni de donde viene, ni lo que esta planeando hacer en las colonias con tanto dinero. Situada en una generacion anterior a la de la Revolucion Americana, pinta la imagen irresistible de una Nueva York mucho mas provocadora de lo que fue inmediatamente despues.

Estamos todos tan de vuelta de todo, tenemos tanta información, tantas opiniones, tanta ironía. No es fácil escribir un ensayo que descoloque y escandalice, que presente una idea novedosa e inesperada. Spufford lo ha conseguido con el argumento probablemente menos popular de nuestro tiempo: Creo en Dios, para mi el cristianismo tiene sentido y estoy harto de que ustedes, los ateos y agnosticos, se crean mas listos que yo. Profesor de literatura, intelectual progresista, Spufford demuestra aqui que se puede ser creyente y vivir en el mundo del siglo XXI sin aguantar que nadie le venga a perdonar la vida.Ya les hemos contado el final, pero haganse un favor: pasen y lean. No se arrepentiran.

Named a Best Book of the Year by TheNew York Times, NPR, Slate, Lit Hub, Fresh Air, and moreA New York Times Notable BookFrom the critically acclaimed and awardwinning author of Golden Hill, an extraordinary symphonic casually stunning (The Wall Street Journal) novel tracing the infinite possibilities of five lives in the bustling neighborhoods of 20th-century London.Lunchtime on a Saturday, 1944: The Woolworths on Bexford High Street in South London receives a delivery of aluminum saucepans. A crowd gathers to see the first new metal in ages - after all, everythings been melted down for the war effort. An instant later, the crowd is gone; incinerated. Among the shoppers were five young children.Who were they? What futures did they lose? This brilliantly constructed novel, inspired by real events, lets an alternative reel of time run, imagining the lives of these five souls as they live through the extraordinary, unimaginable changes of the bustling immensity of 20th-century London. Their intimate everyday dramas, as sons and daughters, spouses, parents, grandparents; as the separated, the remarried, the bereaved. Through decades of social, sexual, and technological transformation, as bus conductors and landlords, as swindlers and teachers, patients and inmates. Days of personal triumphs and disasters; of second chances and redemption.Ingenious and profound, full of warmth and beauty, Light Perpetual offers a moving view of how people confront the gap between their expectations and their reality (The New Yorker) and illuminates the shapes of experience, the extraordinariness of the ordinary, the mysteries of memory, and the preciousness of life.

Una tierna y bella celebración del regalo de la vida.Noviembre del 1944. Una bomba de la Luftwaffe está a punto de impactar contra la ciudad de Londres, truncando, en un solo instante, la vida de cinco niños. Noviembre del 1944. Esa bomba nunca llega a impactar contra su objetivo. Una porcion infima de tiempo ha sido alterada, y la vida de esos cinco niños prosigue su curso, adentrandose en los profundos cambios que moldearon la segunda mitad del siglo xx. Porque quiza siempre haya otros futuros posibles. Otras posibilidades. Luz perpetua es una historia de nuestro dia a dia, de lo magico y maravilloso que hay en la cotidianeidad y su esencia imperecedera. Una novela fascinante y audazmente inventiva que traza las infinitas posibilidades de cinco vidas en los bulliciosos barrios del Londres del siglo xx.Nominado al Booker del 2021, ganador del Encore Award 2022 y elegido como uno de los libros del año por The Sunday Times, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Observer, The Daily Mail y The New York Times.Una autentica obra maestra. The GuardianUn milagro, no solo en su concepcion puramente artistica, sino por toda la empatia que desprende. The Wall Street JournalIntima. Absorbente. Tecnicamente brillante. BooksellerDe una capacidad de fabulacion deslumbrante. The Sunday Times

Estamos todos tan de vuelta de todo, tenemos tanta información, tantas opiniones, tanta ironía… No es fácil escribir un ensayo que descoloque y escandalice, que presente una idea novedosa e inesperad

A thrilling tale of murder and mystery in a city where history has run a little differently from the best selling author of Golden Hill Utterly immersive Spectator Thrilling Financial Times Unlike anything else you will read this year Daily Express A classic of alternative history Observer A delight Sunday TelegraphIt s 1922 and Americans are drinking in speakeasies dancing to jazz stepping quickly to the tempo of modern times In the ancient city of Cahokia a teeming industrial metropolis a tinderbox of every race and creed peace holds Just about But on a snowy night at the end of winter two roughshod detectives are called to the roof of a skyscraper Their investigation will spill the city s secrets and bring it against a soundtrack of wailing clarinets either to destruction or rebirth What readers are saying A marvellous atmospheric beautifully written and gripping read that dares to hope amidst a background of bleak darkness and the pulsing joy of jazz that I recommend highly Original imaginative thought provoking engrossing engaging and beautifully written with characters who are credible and engaging What more is there to ask for from a master at the top of his game I enjoyed this as much as Golden Hill which

PRE-ORDER NONESUCH, FRANCIS SPUFFORDS NEW NOVEL, NOW A truly majestic work of scholarship, thought and literary imagination. Jan Morris, The Times Shot through with crystalline brilliance.Washington Post Fascinating.Sunday Times When Captain Scott died in 1912 on his way back from the South Pole, his story became a myth embedded in the national imagination. Everyone remembers the doomed Captain Oatess last words: Im just going outside, and I may be some time. Francis Spuffords celebrated and prize-winning history shows how Scotts death was the culmination of a national enchantment with vast empty spaces, the beauty of untrodden snow, and perilous journeys to the end of the earth.Winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the Writers Guild Non-Fiction Book of the Year and the Banff Mountain Book Prize.

PRE-ORDER NONESUCH, THE NEW NOVEL FROM FRANCIS SPUFFORD, NOW Passionate, challenging, tumultuously articulate . . . Fascinating. John Carey, Sunday TimesA wonderful, effortlessly brilliant book.Evening StandardA rare gem, a book that carries conviction by being honest all the way through. John Gray, IndependentUnapologetic is a book for those curious about how faith can possibly work in the twenty-first century.But it isnt an argument that Christianity is true - because how could anyone know that (or indeed its opposite)?Its an argument that Christianity is recognisable, drawing on the deep and deeply ordinary vocabulary of human feeling, satisfying those who believe in it by offering a ruthlessly realistic account of the bits of our lives advertising agencies prefer to ignore.

Best book of the century. Richard OsmanJust wonderful. Jan MorrisA marvel. Zadie Smith Every bit as superb as everyone says. Sarah PerryPRE-ORDER NONESUCH, THE NEW NOVEL FROM FRANCIS SPUFFORD, NOW Winner of the Costa First Novel Award, the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize A SUNDAY TIMES TOP 25 NOVEL OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURYOVER 100k COPIES SOLD New York, a small town on the tip of Manhattan Island, 1746. One rainy evening, a charming and handsome young stranger fresh off the boat from England pitches up to a counting house on Golden Hill Street, with a suspicious yet compelling proposition -- he has an order for a thousand pounds in his pocket that he wishes to cash. But can he be trusted? This is New York in its infancy, a place where a young man with a fast tongue can invent himself afresh, fall in love, and find a world of trouble . . .

PRE-ORDER NONESUCH, THE NEW NOVEL FROM FRANCIS SPUFFORD NOW A brilliant, beautiful account of how British boffins triumphed across the decades in creating everything from computer games to Martian landers.Backroom Boys is a vivid love-letter to quiet men in pullovers, to those whose imaginings take shape not in words but in mild steel and carbon fibre and lines of code. Above all, it is a celebration of big dreams achieved with slender means.Sad, inspiring, funny and ultimately triumphant, it follows the technologists whose work kept Concorde flying, created the computer game, conquered the mobile-phone business, saved the human genome for the human race - and who now are sending the Beagle 2 probe to burrow in the cinnamon sands of Mars.A wonderful accomplishment - Backroom Boys sharply evokes a lost world of Dan Dare, Look and Learn and Meccano, and goes on to show us how that world was never lost: that it is, in fact, the secret history of today. Ken MacLeodUnreservedly marvellous . . . Francis Spufford is the Tom Wolfe of technology journalism.FocusProvides start-to-finish enjoyment . . . [Spufford] can make the heart leap simply by detailing what engineers do with mild steel or carbon fibre.Sunday TimesI dont want to pretend that Backroom Boys is perfect; Its just as near to it as makes no difference.Daily TelegraphThe man writes like a dream - informed, fresh, racy prose . . . You wouldnt think that a book describing the fall and rise of British technologies since 1945 could be unputdownable, but Spufford shows it can be done.Guardian