Sarah Perry was born in Essex in 1979. She has been the writer-in-residence at Gladstone’s Library and the writer-in-residence in Prague, UNESCO city of literature. Her first novel After Me Comes the Flood, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Folio Prize, and won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award in 2014. Her second novel The Essex Serpent was a number one bestseller in hardback, was the Waterstones Book of the Year 2016, the British Book Awards Book of the Year 2017, was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the Dylan Thomas Award, and longlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her work has been translated into twenty languages. She lives in Norwich.

Praise for The Essex Serpent

‘Irresistible . . . the best new novel I’ve read in years. It’s the kind of work that makes you alive to the strangeness of the world and of our history’ Daily Telegraph

‘A lovely book . . . The method is itself Victorian – an omniscient narrator scattering sackfuls of sympathy – but the message never gets old: the world is poorer if we don’t put ourselves in each other’s place once in a while’ Spectator

‘A work of great intelligence and charm, by a hugely talented writer’ Sarah Waters

‘A blissful novel of unapologetic appetites, where desire and faith mingle on the marshes, but friendship is the miracle . . . here is a writer who understands life’ Jessie Burton

‘A marvellous novel about the workings of life, love and belief, about science and religion, secrets, mysteries, and the complicated and unexpected shifts of the human heart . . . so good its pages seem lit from within’ Helen MacDonald

‘With only her second outing, Sarah Perry establishes herself as one of the finest fiction writers working in Britain today. The Essex Serpent is nothing less than an all-out triumph’ John Burnside

‘One of the most memorable historical novels of the past decade’ Sunday Times

‘Agile, unconventional, wonderfully weightless, it is a delight’ The Australian

Praise for After Me Comes the Flood

‘A dark, marvellous novel . . . It is not good for a first novel, just very good full stop’ Sunday Telegraph

‘Just occasionally you pick up a novel that is inexplicably gripping from the first page – and Perry’s debut is one of them . . . a remarkable first outing from a writer we should be hearing more of in the future’ Phil Barker, Sunday Times

‘A gripping, memorable, impressive debut’ Holly Williams, Independent on Sunday

‘A deeply creepy and startlingly well-written tale of religion and mystery’ Times Literary Supplement

‘A beautiful, dream-like, unsettling narrative in which every word, like a small jewel, feels carefully chosen, considered and placed. Rarely do debut novels come as assured and impressive as this one’ Sarah Waters

‘Unsettling, thoughtful, eerie . . . very clever and very intriguing’ Tim Pears