Author:Russell Hoban,George Weightman

Brought to you by Penguin.
It is 1097 and a traveller arrives in the great, walled city of Antioch with a vision of a beautiful and mysterious geometric design that will change the lives of all those who see it. Pilgermann is a mesmerising recreation of the world of the Crusades, following its unlikely hero and those he meets on a journey of picaresque horror across a Europe of hatreds, visions and a desperate wish for salvation.
'Superb ... Pilgermann is history, metaphysics, a tangle of mysteries, profound and simple' Guardian
'A dark treatise on the mysterious nature of things ... The world according to Pilgermann is a brutish place borrowing from Hieronymus Bosch, pilgrimage narrative, allegory and the historical novel' The New York Times Book Review
'A strange and beautiful work' Evening Standard
© Russell Hoban 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021
Superb ... Pilgermann is history, metaphysics, a tangle of mysteries, profound and simple.
—— The GuardianThe world according to Pilgermann is a brutish place borrowing from Hieronymus Bosch's grotesque depictions of hell and the literary traditions of pilgrimage narrative, allegory and the historical novel. It is a novel of ideas... sophisticated and demanding.
—— New York Times Book ReviewA strange and beautiful work, whose mysteries are worth contemplation. Hoban's prose is constantly persuasive. Pilgermann is that rare thing - a novel that can be read with profit more than once.
—— Evening StandardShakespearean in scope and tone, moving from the intimate to the universal within paragraphs and providing tragedy, comedy and human frailty... A less practised author would run the risk of over-saturating all the disparate strands, but St Aubyn offers comment on the natural world, genetics, family dynamics, philosophy, psychiatry and ecology without forgetting the tapestry-like threads of the story itself-and provides a satisfying resolution to boot... Brimful of energy, this novel asks big questions-"How could one ever truly enter into another subjectivity?"-without giving us all the answers... Pacey, caustic and self-aware, it is this neatly choreographed dance of themes and ideas that makes for such absorbing and immediate reading.
—— Zoe Apostolides , ProspectLikeable and rounded characters and a celebration of the best things in life: the wilderness of Knepp and a touching but complex love story... St Aubyn's reinvention as a writer is heroic and astonishing. He has emerged from the "very difficult truth" of this childhood to write brilliantly about that and, now, about a lot more.
—— Bryan Appleyard , Sunday TimesThere is in Double Blind a compassion that St Aubyn has elsewhere tended to either eschew or keep implicit. Despite the novel's acerbic edge, St Aubyn is attentive to his characters' suffering and vulnerability whatever their privileges . . . St Aubyn's prose is as elegant as anybody familiar with his previous work might expect. Indeed, so consistent is the writing's quality the reader is apt to miss its many charms, acclimated as they are to it . . . Double Blind is yet another ambitious work by one of today's finest literary stylists
—— Luke Warde , Irish IndependentThis is the best kind of novel of ideas, as entertaining as it is chewy, not to mention immensely pleasurable on the sentence level
—— Stephanie Cross , Daily MailSt Aubyn has lost none of his ability to create rounded characters...and the witty dialogue is well up to the standard of the Melrose books
—— Jake Kerridge , Daily TelegraphWhere Patrick Melrose's trauma was childhood abuse and neglect, for Francis it's abuse and neglect of the planet, for which a new interconnectedness with nature is the only cure... It's bold of St Aubyn to write a novel that's so much about science and about so much science... ideas matter and so does the novel of ideas.
—— Blake Morrison, Book of the Week , GuardianBoth moving and so funny I had to stop every few pages to wipe tears from my eyes
—— Ruth Ozeki , Observer, *Books of the Year*As an addict of Edward St Aubyn's crystalline prose, I devoured Double Blind, a typically audacious blend of big themes
—— Suzi Feay , Tablet, *Books of the Year*There is a scrupulous subtlety about that way that Sahota refuses to let his historical characters act as though they are in a historical novel.
—— Alex Clark , Guardian, Book of the DayAn intense drama of classic themes - love, family, survival, and betrayal - told with passion and precision in Sahota's economical, lyrical prose.
—— Adam Foulds, author of THE QUICKENING MAZEA gripping read... a memorable and poignant depiction of how family histories can echo through the generations.
—— Huston Gilmore , Daily MirrorOutstanding... dense with intricate layers. As author, Sahota brilliantly plays with access to knowledge, to history. China Room promises to haunt and to illuminate.
—— Shelf AwarenessChina Room is very good at examining the trauma held in one family, whether it be personal or housed in a home, village, or country. Sahota seems to acknowledge that although we are not doomed to repeat the past, each subsequent generation feels a measure of the hardship that the last generation faced... a well-developed story of two lives that touch one another in ways that that can never be clearly seen.
—— India Lewis , Arts DeskEngrossing, intricate, excellent.
—— Literary ReviewSunjeev Sahota's The Year of the Runaways propelled him on to the 2015 Booker shortlist. His latest, China Room, a multi-generational masterpiece ... could well see him nominated again.
—— Stephanie Cross , Daily MailPolitical currents seep subtly in and the cumulative effect is potent
—— Max Liu , iExquisitely written
—— Sameer Rahim , Daily Telegraph, *Books of the Year*Sunjeev Sahota balances weighty ideas about cultural prisons and self-determination with hushed, featherweight prose
—— Claire Allfree , The Times, *Books of the Year*[A] hauntingly beautiful novel
—— Jane Shilling , Daily MailSahota's third novel has prose so beautiful it stops you dead
—— Daily TelegraphSunjeev Sahota's The Year of the Runaways propelled him on to the 2015 Booker shortlist. His latest, China Room, a multi-generational masterpiece...could well see him nominated again
—— Stephanie Cross , Daily Mail, *Books to Look Out For 2021*






