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About A.K. Blakemore
A. K. Blakemore won the Desmond Elliot Prize for her debut novel, The Manningtree Witches. She is also the author of two full-length collections of poetry and has translated the work of Sichuanese poet Yu Yoyo. Her poetry and prose writing has been widely published and anthologised, appearing in the London Review of Books, Poetry, Poetry Review and The White Review, among others.
About The Glutton
“An embarrassment of riches. A sensory assault fit to slap any reader awake with its gorgeous glut of baroque prose and wise, poised lessons on life, pleasure, class, desire, and love” Kiran Millwood Hargrave
“An extraordinary accomplishment, a truly horrible and truly glorious novel. I devoured it. AK Blakemore’s intelligence is tempered by a profound and merciful human compassion. Heartbreaking.” Annie Garthwaite
Sister Perpetue is not to move. She is not to fall asleep. She is to sit, keeping guard over the patient’s room. She has heard the stories of his hunger, which defy belief: that he has eaten all manner of creatures and objects. A child even, if the rumours are to be believed.
But it is hard to believe that this slender, frail man is the one they once called The Great Tarare, The Glutton of Lyon. Before, he was just Tarare. Well-meaning and hopelessly curious, born into a world of brawling and sweet cider, to a bereaved mother and a life of slender means.
The 18th Century is drawing to a close, unrest grips the heart of France and life in the village is soon shaken. When a sudden act of violence sees Tarare cast out and left for dead, his ferocious appetite is ignited, and it’s not long before his extraordinary abilities to eat make him a marvel throughout the land.
Following Tarare as he travels from the South of France to Paris and beyond, through the heart of the Revolution, The Glutton is an electric, heart-stopping journey into a world of tumult, upheaval and depravity, wherein the hunger of one peasant is matched only by the insatiable demands of the people of France.
Praise for The Manningtree Witches
“I loved this riveting, appalling, addictive debut… A novel which vividly immerses the reader in the world of those who history has tried to render mute” Megan Nolan
“Dark, original, unsettling, and crackling with fierce and visceral life, The Manningtree Witches heralds the birth of an utterly vital new voice in fiction.” Rebecca Tamás
“Brims with language of arresting loveliness… rendered with sensuous precision… The persecutors in this tale are given close scrutiny, but the book belongs to the persecuted. And on these pages, in all their ordinary glory, those women are at last allowed to live” Paraic O’Donnell, the Guardian
“The novel’s shining quality is its language… We recognise these women – their desires, their fears and their anger – because, the novel seems to suggest, there is not so much that separates us from them after all.” Stephanie Merritt, the Observer
