Faber lands 'ingenious and profound' new novel from Spufford

Faber is to publish Francis Spufford's latest novel, Light Perpetual, next year. 

The publisher acquired UK, Commonwealth and EU rights (excluding Canada) from Clare Alexander at Aitken Alexander Associates.

The novel is described as "profound" and "of the everyday, the miraculous and the everlasting". The synopsis states: "November 1944. A German rocket incinerates a south London household-goods store, and five young lives are atomised in an instant. Jo and Valerie and Alec and Ben and Vernon are gone.

"But what if it were possible to resurrect them – to let them experience the extraordinary, unimaginable changes of the 20th century; to live out all the personal triumphs and disasters, the second chances and redemptions denied them? What kind of future would there be for clever, impulsive Alec? What would happen to Val in the world of men, beckoning beyond her all-female household? What would become of Vern’s greed – and his helplessness in the face of song? Would light or darkness fill Ben’s fragile mind? And where would Jo go, with the music playing in her head?"

Publisher Alex Bowler said: "Like everything Francis has written, Light Perpetual is ingenious and profound, both sweeping and intimate, full of warmth and beauty. It has you turning the final page with a renewed and enriched appreciation for the gift of life."

Spufford is the author of five works of non-fiction, and has sold 212,686 books for £1.8m via Nielsen BookScan's UK Total Consumer Market, with his bestseller and debut novel Golden Hill on 97,237 copies sold in paperback. Golden Hill won the Costa First Novel Award, the RSL Ondaatje Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize, and was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award and the British Book Awards Debut Novel of the Year. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He teaches writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and lives near Cambridge. 

Faber will publish Light Perpetual on 4th February, 2021.