Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford is Hay Festival Book of the Month for February, continuing the Festival's campaign to celebrate and ignite conversation around new books that have particular resonance for us right now.
An ingenious and profound novel, Light Perpetual begins in November 1944. A German rocket incinerates a South London household-goods store, and five young lives are atomised in an instant. Jo and Valerie and Alec and Ben and Vernon are gone. But what if it were possible to resurrect them – to let them experience the extraordinary, unimaginable changes of the twentieth century; to live out all the personal triumphs and disasters, the second chances and redemptions denied them?
From the winner of the Costa First Novel Award, the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize comes a novel of the everyday, the miraculous and the everlasting.
Francis Spufford talks to fellow novelist Rebecca Watson in the Festival's free Book of the Month Live Q&A event on Tuesday 9 February at 7pm. Register for the session now.
Hay Festival’s Book of the Month is selected by the festival team in Hay-on-Wye and aims to celebrate great works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Titles are sold in the UK through the festival’s online shop, as well as being available in all good libraries and bookshops.
Find out more about Hay Festival’s Book of the Month here or explore #HayBookOfTheMonth on social.