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The Chimes

The Chimes

Written by Anna Smaill

Longlisted
The Man Booker Prize 2015
Published by Sceptre

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In her visionary novel, Anna Smaill creates a world where music has replaced the written word and memories are carried as physical objects

In a reimagined London, memory is forbidden by the Order, whose vast musical instrument, the Carillon, renders the population amnesiac. An orphaned young man discovers he has a gift that could change all of this forever. Slowly, inexplicably, Simon is beginning to remember - to wake up. He and his friend Lucien travel to the Order’s stronghold in Oxford, where they learn that nothing they ever believed about their world is true.

Anna Smaill

Anna Smaill

Both The Chimes and her book of poems, The Violinist in Spring, hint at Anna Smaill’s first love; for years she studied the violin with the intention of becoming a professional performer
More about Anna Smaill