After Me Comes the Flood

Sarah Perry was born in Essex in 1979. She has been the writer in residence at Gladstone's Library and the UNESCO World City of Literature Writer in Residence in Prague. After Me Comes the Flood, her first novel, 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 latest novel, The Essex Serpent, was a number one bestseller, Waterstones Book of the Year 2016 and both Fiction book of the Year and Overall Book of the Year 2017 at the British Book Awards. It was then nominated for a further eight literary prizes, including the Costa Novel Award 2017, and the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction 2017. Her work is being translated into fifteen languages.

What makes this novel truly remarkable is its unique vision, its skilful and sophisticated characterisations, and the creation, without unseemly effects, of an atmosphere that will haunt the reader long after the final page John Burnside, Guardian Just occasionally you pick up a novel that is inexplicably gripping from the first page - and Perry's debut is one of them -- Phil Barker Sunday Times An original and haunting book ... a mix of elegant, alluring, but subtly sinister characters ... a talented writer Daily Mail A dark, marvellous novel ... Perry evokes the oppressive atmosphere in precise, elegant prose ... This mesmeric quality recalls Sebald's writing, but Gothic-smudged ... It is not good for a first novel, just very good full stop. So pour yourself a cool drink and bask in a dazzling new writing talent. -- Catherine Blyth Sunday Telegraph After Me Comes the Flood is written in deceptively straightforward prose that gradually yields a profound sense of foreboding. A house and the mysteries it contains; a disconcerting, dark reservoir to which everyone's attention returns; and a most unsettling sense of place - all made me think of Fowles' The Magus, Maxwell's The Chateau, and Woolf's To The Lighthouse. This is a book perhaps most deeply about the unknowability of others and of oneself - and one that, while highly disorienting and eerie, is also intensely warm. I loved it. -- Katherine Angel, author of UNMASTERED Perry's debut successfully creates an air of real eeriness and tension ... the real pleasure here is in her insightful and convincing depiction of family. -- Lesley McDowell Glasgow Herald Impossible to put down Image Magazine 'A beautiful, dream-like narrative. Rarely do debut novels come ans assured and impressive as this one. Sarah Waters Perry is a startlingly good writer. If she doesn't win the Booker prize one day, I'll be amazed. Sophie Hannah Unsettling, thoughtful, eerie...strange and new...It's very clever and very intriguing. Tim Pears