A Sunday Times fiction book of the year
A Times Book of the Year
A Daily Mail Historical Book of the Year
'An extraordinary, quite brilliant book' - C. J. Sansom
'Original and gripping' - The Times
'Powerful and unsettling' - Andrew Taylor
'Engrossing ... compelling' - The Sunday Times
'Powerful, imaginative' - Literary Review
What kind of person keeps a man underground for seven years?
And who would agree to be part of such an experiment?
Herbert Powyss lives on a small estate in the Welsh Marches, with enough time and income to pursue a gentleman's fashionable cultivation of exotic plants and trees. But he longs to make his mark in the field of science - something consequential enough to present to the Royal Society in London.
He hits on a radical experiment in isolation: for seven years a subject will inhabit three rooms in the cellar of the manor house, fitted out with books, paintings and even a chamber organ. Meals will arrive thrice daily via a dumbwaiter. The solitude will be totally unrelieved by any social contact; the subject will keep a diary of his daily thoughts and actions. The pay? Fifty pounds per annum, for life.
Only one man is desperate enough to apply for the job: John Warlow, a semi-literate labourer with a wife and six children to provide for. The experiment, a classic Enlightenment exercise gone more than a little mad, will have unforeseen consequences for all included. In this seductive tale of self-delusion and obsession, Alix Nathan has created an utterly transporting historical novel which is both elegant and unforgettably sinister.
BBC History Magazine Best Historical Fiction of 2019
