Alison MacLeod – författare

The Wave Theory of Angels is Alison MacLeod's compelling mixture of thriller and philosophical exploration.Two widowed fathers named Giles. The first, woodcarver Giles of Beauvais in thirteenth-century France, whose unearthly skill leads the medieval Church to suspect him of heresy. The second, maverick twenty-first-century physicist Giles Carver, who risks his reputation and livelihood for a heretical theory.Both Gileses have daughters named Christina who each fall into a strange coma from which they will not wake. And in their dreams both girls struggle to return to the world that they left behind - a reality which seems to be turning away from them. Are the memories they cling to real? Is the lover they both dream of a protector - or a more sinister presence? And are the men who claim to be their fathers actually someone else entirely 'Part thriller, part philosophical treatise. Quite wonderful' Time Out'Weaves science with mystery, justified faith with prejudice . . . an unfolding thriller in which the big question is whether one can die of an excess of emotion' Independent on Sunday'A daring investigation of medieval philosophy, modern-day physics, and the relation of both to faith and desire . . . a novel with a passion for ideas. MacLeod has an engaged delight in the stuff of life' The Times Literary Supplement'Utterly delightful, beautifully written' Alberto ManguelAlison MacLeod was raised in Canada and has lived in England since 1987. She is the author of three novels, The Changeling, The Wave Theory of Angels and Unexploded, and of a collection of stories, Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction. Unexploded was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2013. Alison MacLeod is Professor of Contemporary Fiction at Chichester University and lives in Brighton.

Unexploded is Alison MacLeod's compelling novel of love and prejudice in wartime Brighton.LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2013.May, 1940. On Park Crescent, Geoffrey and Evelyn Beaumont and their eight-year-old son, Philip, anxiously await news of the expected enemy landing on the beaches of Brighton.It is a year of tension and change. Geoffrey becomes Superintendent of the enemy alien camp at the far reaches of town, while Philip is gripped by the rumour that Hitler will make Brighton's Royal Pavilion his English HQ. As the rumours continue to fly and the days tick on, Evelyn struggles to fall in with the war effort and the constraints of her role in life, and her thoughts become tinged with a mounting, indefinable desperation.Then she meets Otto Gottlieb, a 'degenerate' German-Jewish painter and prisoner in her husband's internment camp. As Europe crumbles, Evelyn's and Otto's mutual distrust slowly begins to change into something else, which will shatter the structures on which her life, her family and her community rest. Love collides with fear, the power of art with the forces of war, and the lives of Evelyn, Otto and Geoffrey are changed irrevocably.Praise for Alison MacLeod:'Alison MacLeod is a strikingly original voice. Her stories create intimate worlds and make the reader live in them with an intensity which is haunting, disturbing and above all beguiling' Helen Dunmore 'MacLeod's fictions are evocations of desire and its mysteries . . . [Her] characters are strong, and they are worth listening to' Guardian'MacLeod has an engaged delight in the stuff of life' The Times Literary Supplement'MacLeod's range - spanning the movingly real to the mysteriously surreal - is excitingly, imaginatively realised and unified in awareness of the dark menace of love's uncertainty' MetroAlison MacLeod was raised in Canada and has lived in England since 1987. She is the author of three novels, The Changeling, The Wave Theory of Angels and Unexploded, and of a collection of stories, Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction. Unexploded was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2013. She is Professor of Contemporary Fiction at Chichester University and lives in Brighton.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 GOVERNOR GENERAL''S LITERARY AWARDSAcutely observed, evocative collection of short stories from the Man Booker Prize-longlisted author of Unexploded, blending fiction, biography and memoirHovering on the border of life and death, these stories form a ground-shifting collection, taking us into history, literature and the hidden lives of iconic figures. In 1920s Nova Scotia, as winter begins to thaw, a woman emerges from mourning and wears a new fur coat to a dance that will change everything. A teenager searches for his lover on a charged summer evening in 2011, as around him London erupts in anger. A cardiac specialist lingers on the edge of consciousness as he awaits a new heart – and is transported to an attic room half a century ago. In an ancient Yorkshire churchyard, the author visits Sylvia Plath''s grave and makes an unexpected connection across time. On a trip to Brighton, reluctant jihadists face the ultimate spiritual test. And at Charleston, Angelica Garnett, child of the Bloomsbury Group, is overcome by the past, all the beloved ghosts that spring to life before her eyes. Precise, playful and evocative, these exquisitely crafted stories explore memory, the media and mortality, unfolding at the line between reality and fiction. Written with vigorous intelligence and delicate insight, this collection captures the surprising joys, small tragedies and profound truths of existence.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARDSAcutely observed, evocative collection of short stories from the Man Booker Prize-longlisted author of Unexploded, blending fiction, biography and memoirHovering on the border of life and death, these stories form a ground-shifting collection, taking us into history, literature and the hidden lives of iconic figures. In 1920s Nova Scotia, as winter begins to thaw, a woman emerges from mourning and wears a new fur coat to a dance that will change everything. A teenager searches for his lover on a charged summer evening in 2011, as around him London erupts in anger. A cardiac specialist lingers on the edge of consciousness as he awaits a new heart – and is transported to an attic room half a century ago. In an ancient Yorkshire churchyard, the author visits Sylvia Plath’s grave and makes an unexpected connection across time. On a trip to Brighton, reluctant jihadists face the ultimate spiritual test. And at Charleston, Angelica Garnett, child of the Bloomsbury Group, is overcome by the past, all the beloved ghosts that spring to life before her eyes. Precise, playful and evocative, these exquisitely crafted stories explore memory, the media and mortality, unfolding at the line between reality and fiction. Written with vigorous intelligence and delicate insight, this collection captures the surprising joys, small tragedies and profound truths of existence.

The spellbinding story of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and the society that put it on trial; the story of a novel and its ripple effects across half a century, and about the transformative and triumphant power of fiction itself.‘A hugely daring, intrigue-packed, decade-jumping doorstopper that teasingly blends fiction and actuality with wit and panache’ DAILY MAIL‘A triumph ... it will conquer your heart' ELIF SHAFAK'Glorious and arresting ... A widescreen novel' OBSERVER'A passionate, epic joy' MADELINE MILLER'Powerful, moving, brilliant ... An utterly captivating read' ELIZABETH GILBERT________________________D. H. Lawrence is dying. Exiled in the Mediterranean, he dreams of the past. There are the years early in his marriage during the war, where his desperation drives him to commit a terrible betrayal. And there is a woman in an Italian courtyard, her chestnut hair red with summer. Jacqueline and her husband have already been marked out for greatness. Passing through New York, she slips into a hearing where a book, not a man, is brought to trial. A young woman and a young man meet amid the restricted section of a famous library, and make love. Scattered and blown by the winds of history, their stories are bound together, and brought before the jury. On both sides of the Atlantic, society is asking, and continues to ask: is it obscenity – or is it tenderness?'Gorgeously written and meticulously conceived' DAVID LEAVITT

The spellbinding story of Lady Chatterley''s Lover, and the society that put it on trial; the story of a novel and its ripple effects across half a century, and about the transformative and triumphant power of fiction itself.''A hugely daring, intrigue-packed, decade-jumping doorstopper that teasingly blends fiction and actuality with wit and panache'' DAILY MAIL''A triumph ... it will conquer your heart'' ELIF SHAFAK''Glorious and arresting ... A widescreen novel'' OBSERVER''A passionate, epic joy'' MADELINE MILLER''Powerful, moving, brilliant ... An utterly captivating read'' ELIZABETH GILBERT________________________D. H. Lawrence is dying. Exiled in the Mediterranean, he dreams of the past. There are the years early in his marriage during the war, where his desperation drives him to commit a terrible betrayal. And there is a woman in an Italian courtyard, her chestnut hair red with summer. Jacqueline and her husband have already been marked out for greatness. Passing through New York, she slips into a hearing where a book, not a man, is brought to trial. A young woman and a young man meet amid the restricted section of a famous library, and make love. Scattered and blown by the winds of history, their stories are bound together, and brought before the jury. On both sides of the Atlantic, society is asking, and continues to ask: is it obscenity – or is it tenderness?''Gorgeously written and meticulously conceived'' DAVID LEAVITT

The spellbinding story of Lady Chatterley''s Lover, and the society that put it on trial; the story of a novel and its ripple effects across half a century, and about the transformative and triumphant power of fiction itself.''A hugely daring, intrigue-packed, decade-jumping doorstopper that teasingly blends fiction and actuality with wit and panache'' DAILY MAIL''A triumph ... it will conquer your heart'' ELIF SHAFAK''Glorious and arresting ... A widescreen novel'' OBSERVER''A passionate, epic joy'' MADELINE MILLER''Powerful, moving, brilliant ... An utterly captivating read'' ELIZABETH GILBERT________________________D. H. Lawrence is dying. Exiled in the Mediterranean, he dreams of the past. There are the years early in his marriage during the war, where his desperation drives him to commit a terrible betrayal. And there is a woman in an Italian courtyard, her chestnut hair red with summer. Jacqueline and her husband have already been marked out for greatness. Passing through New York, she slips into a hearing where a book, not a man, is brought to trial. A young woman and a young man meet amid the restricted section of a famous library, and make love. Scattered and blown by the winds of history, their stories are bound together, and brought before the jury. On both sides of the Atlantic, society is asking, and continues to ask: is it obscenity – or is it tenderness?''Gorgeously written and meticulously conceived'' DAVID LEAVITT

From the legends of King Arthur embedded in the rocky splendour of Tintagel to the folklore and mysticism of Stonehenge, English Heritage sites are often closely linked to native English myths. Following on from the bestselling ghost story anthology Eight Ghosts, this new collection of stories inspired by the legends and tales that swirl through the history of eight ancient historical sites.Including an essay by James Kidd on the importance of myth to our landscape and our fiction, and an English Heritage survey of sites and associated legends, These Our Monsters is an evocative collection that brings new voices and fresh creative alchemy to our story-telling heritage.Author and atmospheric locations include:Edward Carey - Bury St Edmunds AbbeySarah Hall - Castlerigg and other stone circlesPaul Kingsnorth - StonehengeAlison MacLeod - Down HouseGraeme Macrae Burnet - Whitby AbbeySarah Moss - Berwick CastleFiona Mozley - Carlisle CastleAdam Thorpe - Tintagel CastleWith original black-and-white illustrations by Clive Hicks-Jenkins