Welcome to London in lockdown – in 1665This timely re-release of Defoe’s classic comes with an introduction by Wellcome-Prize-winning author, Will Eaves.Actually written sixty years after the plague of 1665 swept through London, Defoe brings the city to life in all of its hardship and fear. With a wealth of detail, A Journal of the Plague Year seems almost a firsthand account, taking readers through the neighborhoods, houses and streets that have drasticall...

There is in the short story, at its most characteristic, something we do not often find in the novel, Frank O’Connor wrote, ‘an intense awareness of human loneliness.’The stories shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award with BookTrust 2017 all feature characters that are disconnected, willingly or unwillingly, from those around them: a mysterious out-of-towner is shunned by her new colleagues; a grieving husband retreats into his old compulsion for hoarding; a promising a...

Wall Street Journal “Distinctive Novel of the Year” selection“[Murmur will] grip your mind in the very first pages, break your heart halfway through, and in the end, strangely, unexpectedly, restore your faith in human beings and their endless capacity for resilience.” —Wellcome Book Prize chair of judges Elif Shafak in the Guardian“Eaves’ playful, fiercely intelligent interpretation of aspects of the life of a ch...

A memoir by the 2019 Wellcome Prize winner Will Eaves that looks at the creation of six piano pieces.'A brief yet elegant excursion into the nature and execution of creativity' Clemency Burton-Hill, Financial Times'A wonderfully sensitive and probing meditation on the writing of words and music' Rolf Hind, composer and pianistWhat lies behind the creation of a piece of music? Does it spring fully formed from a composer’s mi...

Family: sometimes heaven, sometimes hell, never what it seemsThe Alldens live in a ramshackle house in suburban Bath. Don and Emily have four children: confident Liz, satirical Clive, shy Lotte, and Benjamin, the late arrival. Together they take the usual knocks, go to work, go abroad, go to university, go to pieces. Don and Emily stick it out, their strong marriage tested by experience and frustrated by love for Clive, the ardent boxing fan at odds with himself, their special chil...

An earthquake strikes at the heart of London, its epicentre a theatre where a lavish production of 'The Tempest' has just opened. Thus the scene is set for Will Eaves' gloriously deft tragicomedy of our time.Nothing To Be Afraid Of is both a lament for hope abandoned and innocence betrayed, and an exquisite comic pageant of Shakespearean vitality and compassion: an incidental theatrical history across the twentieth century of the art of pretence; of patien...

In 1983, an ordinary teenager called Daniel Rathbone fell in love, spurned a friend, and stumbled on the ability to see in the dark. On his twenty-fifth birthday, Daniel is bequeathed a second no less unusual gift - a Victorian writing box, the legacy of his father and the repository of youthful ambition and a dimly perceived guilt. The box is opened, but its contents resist interpretation. When a visit from the once-spurned friend coincides with the death of a contemporary, Daniel's pecul...

Will Eaves' first book of poems explores several continents, moods and stages of life. Common experience - of growing up, growing older, losing a parent, being in love, enjoying the natural world in all its nearness and remoteness - provides his themes. Wherever they are set, in the Australian bush or in a West Country sickroom, the poems keep faith with the consolations that come from close observation and stillness. Well-loved authors and books appear suddenly; hair-raising anecdotes and...

Well-loved authors and books appear suddenly; hair-raising anecdotes and football matches become occasions for elegiac comedy; and music and domestic ritual raise ghosts. This emotionally intense poetry collection explores several continents, moods, and stages of life—including the common experiences of growing up, growing older, losing a parent, being in love, and enjoying the natural world. Both formal and informal, funny and sad, these lyrical poems seek out a strangeness in the everyda...

A memoir by the 2019 Wellcome Prize winner Will Eaves that looks at the creation of six piano pieces.'A brief yet elegant excursion into the nature and execution of creativity' Clemency Burton-Hill, Financial Times'A wonderfully sensitive and probing meditation on the writing of words and music' Rolf Hind, composer and pianistWhat lies behind the creation of a piece of music? Does it spring fully formed from a composer’s mi...

In Murmur, a hallucinatory masterwork, Will Eaves invites us into the brilliant mind of Alec Pryor, a character inspired by Alan Turing.Turing, father of artificial intelligence and pioneer of radical new techniques to break the Nazi Enigma cipher during World War II, was later persecuted by the British state for “gross indecency with another male” and forced to undergo chemical castration.Set during the devastating period before Turing’s suicide, ...

Shortlisted for the 2018 Goldsmiths PrizeTaking its cue from the arrest and legally enforced chemical castration of the mathematician Alan Turing, Murmur is the account of a man who responds to intolerable physical and mental stress with love, honour and a rigorous, unsentimental curiosity about the ways in which we perceive ourselves and the world. Formally audacious, daring in its intellectual inquiry and unwaveringly humane, Will Eaves’s new novel is a rare achievement.