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The Kraken Wakes
The Kraken Wakes
Dec 29, 2025 9:23 AM

Author:John Wyndham

The Kraken Wakes

'Ingenious, horrifying' - Guardian

It started with fireballs raining down from the sky and crashing into the oceans' deeps. Then ships began sinking mysteriously and later 'sea tanks' emerged from the deeps to claim people . . .

For journalists Mike and Phyllis Watson, what at first appears to be a curiosity becomes a global calamity. Helpless, they watch as humanity struggles to survive now that water - one of the compounds upon which life depends - is turned against them. Finally, sea levels begin their inexorable rise . . .

The Kraken Wakes is a brilliant novel of how humankind responds to the threat of its own extinction and, ultimately, asks what we are prepared to do in order to survive.

Reviews

Ingenious, horrifying

—— Guardian

'Twelve Hawks' much anticipated novel is powerful, mainstream fiction built on a foundation of cutting-edge technology laced with fantasy and the chilling specter of an all-too-possible social and political reality'

—— Publishers Weekly

The book they say is the new Da Vinci Code. Take some Orwellian undertones, add a dash of Philip Pullman and sprinkle with a few lines of Dan Brown

—— Metro

Compelling...Picture The Matrix crossed with William Gibson and you'll have a sense of The Traveller

—— Newsday

A cyber 1984...Page-turningly swift, with a cliffhanger ending

—— New York Times

Douglas Kennedy is back with another of his intriguing, beautifully written page-turners

—— Elle

A genius . . . Elusive, delicate but lasting

—— Alan Ayckbourn

P.G. Wodehouse is the gold standard of English wit

—— Christopher Hitchens

To dive into a Wodehouse novel is to swim in some of the most elegantly turned phrases in the English language

—— Ben Schott

Wodehouse is so utterly, properly, simply funny

—— Adele Parks

I've recorded all the Jeeves books, and I can tell you this: it's like singing Mozart. The perfection of the phrasing is a physical pleasure. I doubt if any writer in the English language has more perfect music

—— Simon Callow

Wodehouse was quite simply the Bee's Knees. And then some

—— Joseph Connolly

I constantly find myself drooling with admiration at the sublime way Wodehouse plays with the English language

—— Simon Brett

Quite simply, the master of comic writing at work

—— Jane Moore

To pick up a Wodehouse novel is to find oneself in the presence of genius - no writer has ever given me so much pure enjoyment

—— John Julius Norwich

Compulsory reading for anyone who has a pig, an aunt - or a sense of humour!

—— Lindsey Davis

The Wodehouse wit should be registered at Police HQ as a chemical weapon

—— Kathy Lette

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

—— Arabella Weir

The funniest writer ever to put words to paper

—— Hugh Laurie

The greatest comic writer ever

—— Douglas Adams

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

—— Sebastian Faulks

Sublime comic genius

—— Ben Elton

You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour

—— Stephen Fry

The Everyman edition promises to be a splendid celebration of the divine Plum

—— The Independent

The handsome bindings are only the cherry on top of what is already a cake without compare

—— Evening Standard

You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour

—— Stephen Fry
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