Birdcage Walk: A dazzling historical thriller - Tapa blanda

"This is the finest novel Helen Dunmore has written ... From the start, Birdcage Walk has the command of a thriller ... The novel’s cast is marvellous and vivid ... A novel that deserves to be cherished and to last." (Kate Kellaway Observer)

"This powerful novel is a fine final flourish from a gifted writer ... The power Dunmore gives to lowly female lives is inescapably moving, their stories taking us on a remarkable journey into the visceral heart of the female experience in Georgian Britain ... [Dunmore is] one of the bravest and most versatile writers of her generation ... This fine, fiery novel will surely be remembered as one of her best." (Melissa Katsoulis The Times)

"Like many of Dunmore’s novels, Birdcage Walk defies categorisation ... a blend of beauty and horror evoked with such breath-taking poetry that it haunts me still ... she has an extraordinary gift for taking the ordinary and familiar and rendering them new. When Tredevant’s growing unpredictability once more tightens the narrative, forcing the story back into the ominous and unsettling territory where it first began, it is easy to see why [Dunmore] has earned a place among the finest writers of historical fiction working today." (Guardian)

"Helen Dunmore’s quietly brilliant historical novels are among the best fiction of our time." (Jake Kerridge Daily Telegraph)

"A finely wrought psychological thriller ... But it’s ultimately a novel about the ways in which we remember and, as such, a fitting contribution to Dunmore’s extraordinary legacy." (Daily Mail)

"Elegant prose and brilliantly researched historical detail ... a devastatingly good novel." (Sunday Express, S Magazine)

"Part psychological thriller, part poetic exhumation of the past, it’s a fiery, first-rate historical novel from an author who’ll be much missed" (Mail on Sunday, Summer Reads)

"A firecracker of a historical murder mystery story with which to leave her many admirers" (Guardian, Readers Books of the Year)

"Dunmore is skilled at claiming the huge canvasses of history and painting upon them exquisitely detailed human tragedies ... Every scene is saturated with vivid period detail but Dunmore’s touch is feather-light." (Francesca Segal Financial Times)

"A very good novel indeed" (Scotsman, Books of the Year)

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
***Nominated for the 2018 Independent Booksellers Week Award***

‘The finest novel Dunmore has written.’ Observer
'Superb and poignant.’ Guardian
‘Quietly brilliant ... among the best fiction of our time.’ Daily Telegraph

It is 1792 and Europe is seized by political turmoil and violence.

Lizzie Fawkes has grown up in Radical circles where each step of the French Revolution is followed with eager idealism. But she has recently married John Diner Tredevant, a property developer who is heavily invested in Bristol’s housing boom, and he has everything to lose from social upheaval and the prospect of war.

Diner believes that Lizzie’s independent, questioning spirit must be coerced and subdued. She belongs to him: law and custom confirm it, and she must live as he wants.

But as Diner’s passion for Lizzie darkens, she soon finds herself dangerously alone.

Longlisted for the 2018 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction