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Breath
Breath
Aug 2, 2025 12:52 AM

Author:Michael Symmons Roberts

Breath

In a country recovering from a brutal and divisive civil war, a young boy, Jamie, is knocked off his bike and dies in a city street. His father agrees to allow one of Jamie's lungs to be removed and flown over the border for a transplant.

As the night unfolds and the plane travels across the war-ravaged country, we see the drama from three different perspectives: the father, grieving for the son he perhaps never knew well enough; the lung's recipient, an old man fighting for breath; and in the turbulent sky between them, the young pilot who is closest to Jamie - or at least to his breath, his spirit, his voice.

Reviews

A bleakly powerful ending with a moving, finely contrived element of hope

—— Times Literary Supplement

Beautifully spare, poetic prose...A haunting book

—— Metro

A thoughtful reminder of the wounds of conflict, and the depths of its scars... a clever, innovative, unusual book which is both timeless and timely

—— Scotsman

A well-paced narrative with carefully crafted twists...intensely visual descriptions... Inventive in its form and often profound in its poetry, Symmons Roberts' gripping story is a meditation on the difficulty of forgiveness in wartime

—— Sunday Telegraph

Symmons Roberts is already a poet of note, and this...is discernibly a poet's book. Short and introspective, it stays in the mind and echoes

—— The Times

Magically spun out. An entrancing yet disturbing book

—— Sunday Express

An absorbing fable of the here-and-now

—— Independent

Dazzling

—— Vanity Fair

A brilliant evocation of the life of the inventor Nikola Tesla

—— Guardian

Remarkable... Hunt wears her historical and scientific learning lightly

—— Financial Times

Hunt's deft blend of sf elements and romantic subplots may remind readers of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, while her prose style and attention to historical detail are on a par with Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Hunt's greatest triumph, however, lies in her depiction of Tesla, who wavers between genius and madness with carefully controlled charm.

—— Library Journal

A fantastical story that engages the heart and mind, as Hunt pays tribute to the power of invention, and the enduring strength of love

—— Psychologies

Hunt has done a fine job of reanimating the dead and reawakening my curiosity about this odd, overlooked man... Hunt's prose is sylish and tasty and her observations wise and witty

—— Scotsman

Weird and wonderful debut novel

—— Red

Remarkable...Hunt wears her historical and scientific learning lightly

—— Financial Times

An ambitious conflation of fact and fiction

—— Literary Review

Samantha Hunt's fantasy comes closer than any biography to solving the riddle of Tesla's commercial and personal failings ... The Invention of Everything Else is perfect for nights spent in the wrong hotel, once your travel plans have, as usual, gone subtly awry

—— New Scientist

a fascinating blend of fact, fiction, history and dare I say, science fiction surrounding the weird and wonderful life of Nikola Tesla the acknowledged father of radio and AC electricity.

—— Dovegreyreader

her portrait of Tesla buzzes with vitality

—— Metro

This unusual novel skilfully interweaves the story of the eccentric inventor of radio and AC electricity with that of Louisa ... a compelling novel.

—— Emma Lee-Potter , Express

A sophisticated pastiche of science fiction, fantasy, melodrama, and historical anecdote....It all adds up to a precocious math of human marvel

—— Elle

Witty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny

—— Arabella Weir

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

—— Sebastian Faulks

Sublime comic genius

—— Ben Elton

Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in

—— Evelyn Waugh
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