A spellbinding tale about an ambitious young woman who must thwart an occult plot by time-traveling fascists during the chaos of the London Blitz—from “one of our most powerful writers of wayward historical fiction” (The Washington Post).Following the acclaim of his previous novels Golden Hill and Cahokia Jazz, Francis Spufford delivers a masterpiece of literary fantasy, hailed by Joe Hill as “a book that scoops up all the wonder and hope and pleasure of the Narnia novels, and pours it into a story for grown-ups.”It’s the summer of 1939, and the air in London is thick with the tension of impending war. Iris Hawkins, a fiery young financial secretary, has a chance encounter with Geoff, a genius engineer from the new technology of television. What was supposed to be one night of abandon draws her instead into a nightmare of otherworldly pursuit—into a reality where time bends, spirits can be summoned, and history hangs by a thread.Soon there are Nazi planes droning overhead. In a time when death falls randomly from above each night, when the streets are darker than the wildest forest and all the men are away in uniform, the defense of the city is in the hands of its women. But Iris has more to contend with than just the terrors of the Blitz. Over the rooftops of burning London, in the twisted passages between past and present, through the vast night sky and across the tiny screens of early television, a fascist fanatic is travelling with a gun in her hand, and only Iris can stop her from altering the course of history forever.Both a thrilling page-turner and a profound exploration of ambition, love, and the fight against tyranny, Nonesuch is a story that is as enchanting as it is urgent. Packed with twists, tension, and wonder, it is a triumph of storytelling.
That is because you have not thought it through. Think now, I beseech you. Think of the extremity of what might be wrought by one with the power to edit the past. Think how you might blight human freedoms while they were still in the bud. How you might prevent knowledge, if you were able to remove certain minds.
How you could arrest the rise of human intelligence altogether, if you reached far enough back. Think how you two might without warning have woken here this morning, and found bed, house, city all gone, and yourselves language-less mammals in a forest of unending peace. Peace without reason, without change, without guilt, without hope. A perpetual present tense. An animal eternity, in which what had been lost would never be missed, because it had never arisen. You could crouch under the trees when it rained, and couple in the open without blushing when the sun shone. You would die without fear, having no comprehension of what was happening to you, and when you did, your children would not trouble to bury your bones. Would you like that?
That is because you have not thought it through. Think now, I beseech you. Think of the extremity of what might be wrought by one with the power to edit the past. Think how you might blight human freedoms while they were still in the bud. How you might prevent knowledge, if you were able to remove certain minds.
How you could arrest the rise of human intelligence altogether, if you reached far enough back. Think how you two might without warning have woken here this morning, and found bed, house, city all gone, and yourselves language-less mammals in a forest of unending peace. Peace without reason, without change, without guilt, without hope. A perpetual present tense. An animal eternity, in which what had been lost would never be missed, because it had never arisen. You could crouch under the trees when it rained, and couple in the open without blushing when the sun shone. You would die without fear, having no comprehension of what was happening to you, and when you did, your children would not trouble to bury your bones. Would you like that?
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