Fludd - by Hilary Mantel (Paperback)

About the Book

A mysterious curate is sent to an English village in 1956 to assist a fallen priest. Fludd turns out to be a reincarnated alchemist who helps the priest with his drinking problem and sets off a series of miracles in the superstitious town that understands little of romance or sentimentality.

Book Synopsis

From the double Booker Prize-winning author Hilary Mantel, a novel that Knits together the miraculous and the mundane, the dreadful and the ludicrous. Fludd is a tale of alchemy and transformation told with astonishing art, insight, humor, and wit.

One dark and stormy night in 1956, a stranger named Fludd mysteriously turns up in the dismal village of Fetherhoughton. He is the curate sent by the bishop to assist Father Angwin-or is he? In the most unlikely of places, a superstitious town that understands little of romance or sentimentality, where bad blood between neighbors is ancient and impenetrable, miracles begin to bloom. No matter how copiously Father Angwin drinks while he confesses his broken faith, the level of the bottle does not drop. Although Fludd does not appear to be eating, the food on his plate disappears. Fludd becomes lover, gravedigger, and savior, transforming his dull office into a golden regency of decision, unashamed sensation, and unprecedented action. Knitting together the miraculous and the mundane, the dreadful and the ludicrous, Fludd is a tale of alchemy and transformation told with astonishing art, insight, humor, and wit.

Review Quotes

"Hilary Mantel's wildly inventive novel about a reincarnated alchemist and an imaginary village in England in the fifties is 'in every sense a magical book'."
--Listener (UK)

"Fludd...establishes [Mantel] in the front rank of novelists writing in English today."
--The Guardian (London)

About the Author

Hilary Mantel was the author of the bestselling novel Wolf Hall and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, which both won the Booker Prize. The final novel of the Wolf Hall trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, debuted at #1 on The New York Times bestseller list and won world-wide critical acclaim. Mantel wrote seventeen celebrated books, including the memoir Giving Up the Ghost, and she was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the Walter Scott Prize, the Costa Book Award, the Hawthornden Prize, and many other accolades. In 2014, Mantel was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She died at age seventy in 2022.