Nonesuch
The Sunday Times bestseller
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- €21.99
Publisher Description
A spell-binding fantasy novel set in the Blitz, from the author of Golden Hill.
'What a joy! A novel with endless ingenuity and enormous heart.' Kaliane Bradley
'Everything that great literature should be.' Sarah Perry
'His Dark Materials meets the Blitz.' Observer
'An all-encompassing masterpiece.' London Standard
'My god can he write.' Richard Osman
'Ripples with literary magic.' The Times
It's the summer of 1939. London is on the brink of catastrophic war. Iris Hawkins, an ambitious young woman in the stuffy world of City finance, has a chance encounter with Geoff, a technical whizz at the BBC's nascent television unit.
What was supposed to be one night of abandon draws her instead into an adventure of otherworldly pursuit - into a reality where time bends, spirits can be summoned, and history hangs by a thread. Soon there are Nazi planes overhead. But Iris has more to contend with than the terrors of the Blitz. Over the rooftops of burning London, in the twisted passages between past and present, a fascist fanatic is travelling with a gun in her hand.
And only Iris can stop her from altering the course of history forever.
Nonesuch was a Sunday Times bestseller w/e 28/2/2026.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Spufford (Cahokia Jazz) spins a lavish historical fantasy of a secretary and her lover battling time-traveling fascists on the eve of WWII. The story opens with daring Iris Hawkins enjoying a night out after a day of drudgery at her London financial firm. By chance, she meets brilliant engineer Geoff Hale, who's besotted with gorgeous Nazi sympathizer Lady Lalage "Lall" Cunningham, and impulsively seduces him. After spending the night with Geoff, Iris sees a nightmarish inhuman figure keeping watch outside his house. She continues seeing Geoff, and the pair are visited by a friendly angel who warns them of a threat greater than Hitler: a cabal of British fascists including Lall are planning to use imprisoned angels, like the one Iris saw outside Geoff's house, to go back in time and alter history for the worse. Spufford approaches the magical elements with lighthearted humor ("Oh, come on," Geoff says to the angel. "No one has believed in the luminiferous aether since about, what, 1870! It doesn't exist!" To which the angel replies, "I see that I have used terms you find anachronistic. Would you prefer it if I said that quantum tunneling was involved?"). As Iris enters a parallel world called Nonesuch to save London, Spufford sustains the tension all the way to the miraculous finale. Readers will be enthralled.
