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Light Perpetual

Light Perpetual

Written by Francis Spufford

Longlisted
The Booker Prize 2021
Published by Faber & Faber

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Francis Spufford’s ingenious and miraculously tender novel reimagines the lives of five London children killed in a rocket attack in World War Two

November 1944. A German rocket strikes London, and five lives are atomised in an instant. November 1944. That rocket never lands. A single second in time is altered, and five young lives go on to experience all the unimaginable changes of the 20th century. Because maybe there are always other futures. Other chances.

Francis Spufford

Francis Spufford

Francis Spufford is the author of five highly praised works of non-fiction, most frequently described by reviewers as either ‘bizarre’ or ‘brilliant’, and usually as both
More about Francis Spufford

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Light Perpetual

Listen to Francis Spufford on BBC Radio 4's Open Book

Francis Spufford talked to author Elizabeth Day about Light Perpetual for BBC Radio 4’s Open Book.

 

Speaking about what he set out to do with the novel, he said: ‘I wanted to show that life is gratuitous, I wanted to take it away and then by giving it back again keep us aware on some level that it was an arbitrary and fragile possession. I wanted us not to take it for granted as a secure possession. I wanted to make things fragile, and then, as the lives of my five characters went on, I wanted the reader to be able to forget about that.’

 

Spufford was joined by Professor David Edgerton, who cast a historian’s eye over the period the novel is set.

Open Book, BBC Radio 4