The author of Enlightenment, longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024, shares the childhood memory that inspired her latest book, and her admiration for the ‘faultless’ novel by J.L. Carr
Sarah Perry
Sarah Perry is an internationally bestselling author. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
Her work includes the novels Melmoth, The Essex Serpent and After Me Comes the Flood, and the non-fiction Essex Girls. She is a winner of the Waterstone’s Book of the Year Award and the British Book of the Year Award and has been nominated for major literary prizes including the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Folio Prize and the Costa Novel Award. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has a PhD in Creative Writing.
Her novel Enlightenment was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024.
A quiet novel of deep pleasures set in small-town Essex – and an ambitious exploration of the heavens, comets, faith, ghosts and love
The 2024 judges on Enlightenment
All nominated books
A story of love and astronomy told over the course of 20 years through the lives of two improbable best friends
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The 2024 longlistees on the book that inspired them to become a writer
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