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Unholy Night
Unholy Night
Sep 12, 2025 11:43 AM

Author:Seth Grahame-Smith

Unholy Night

It's one of the most iconic vignettes in history: three men on camels, arriving at a manger, bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. An impossibly bright star is suspended in the vast desert sky above. It's a moment of serenity and grace. A holy night...

But what do we really know about the Three Kings of the Nativity? The Bible says little about this enigmatic trio. Not even their names are mentioned. The historical record is vague at best. How doe know that they were three kings from the East? What if they were petty, murderous thieves - led by a mercurial individual called Balthazar - on the run, escaping through Judea under cover of night who stumble upon the famous manger, its newborn child and his earthly parents? Here, the brilliant and slightly warped mind behind Pride and Prejudice and Zombies takes a little mystery, plays fast and loose with a bit of history to weave an epic tale. It's an adventure that will see these thieves fight the last magical creatures of the Old Testament, cross paths with historical figures such as Pontius Pilate and John the Baptist, and deliver the family - as the Bible tells us - to the safety of Egypt.

Indeed, this may just be the greatest story never told...

Reviews

Akin to fusing Game of Thrones with the Gospel of St Luke

—— Entertainment Weekly

Grahame-Smith has forsaken neither graphic gore nor gleeful historical and religious revisionism . . . Great fun

—— Elizabeth Hand , Washington Post

A stunning work of terrifying plausability ... a worthy and entertaining read

—— Publisher's Weekly

Eggers has set his style and pace to technothriller: the writing is brisk, spare and efficient ... it works

—— Time

The Circle is 'Brave New World' for our brave new world ... fast, witty and troubling

—— Washington Post

An elegantly told, compulsively readable parable for the 21st Century

—— Vanity Fair

Eggers's writing is so fluent, his ventriloquism of tech-world dialect so light, his denouement so enjoyably inevitable

—— Observer

A gripping and highly unsettling read

—— Sunday Times

Unputdownable

—— Times

Tremendous novel ... inventive, big hearted and very funny. Prepare to be addicted

—— Daily Mail

Compelling and deeply contemporary

—— L.A Times

Eggers brilliantly depicts the Internet binges, torrents of information and endless loops of feedback that increasingly characterize modern life

—— Booklist

It’s an extraordinary achievement and a riveting work of prose

—— The Herald

A classic Ackroyd tale that will not fail to please

—— Victoria Clark, 4 stars , Lady

With its distinctive language, structure and narrative approach, Lenin's Kisses presents a distictive version of 'rural china' and 'revolutionary China', even while establishing a new literary 'native China'

—— Contemporary Literature Commentary

Yan Lianke sees and describes his characters with great tenderness . . . this talented and sensitive writer exposes the absurdity of our time

—— La Croix

Sophie Hannah is a real star.

—— Daily Telegraph

Sophie Hannah has quickly established herself as a doyenne of the 'home horror' school of psychological tension, taking domestic situations and wringing from them dark, gothic thrills.

—— Financial Times

Hannah is a master of intense psychological thrillers . . . Full of twists and turns, and terrifying, too.

—— heat

She grips from start to finish - a grip which held me against my will because the sustained atmosphere of mild hysteria is hard to take . . . I couldn't put it down.

—— Literary Review

Pynchon’s latest novel is a historical romance set in during the internet’s infancy in the spring of 2001.

—— Jo Ellison and Violet Henderson , Vogue

Bleeding Edge is a romp. On full display are Pynchon’s trademark linguistic and imaginative acrobatics… It may sound frivolous but an emotional maturity counterpoints the silly songs, deliberately bad puns, and pop-cultural references

—— Irish Examiner

When he’s in his hardboiled vein, [Pynchon] writes the most entertaining dialogue in any year.

—— Tom Stoppard , Guardian

Pynchon's best novel since Mason & Dixon, an exhilarating shaggy-dog private-detective story that punctured its own garrulous charm with sharp stabs of betrayal and threat. Astonishing, too, that that a 76-year-old should produce a novel with such wild and slangy bounce.

—— Tim Martin , Telegraph

Pynchon at his most hilarious, it gave way to more sombre realities involving a suspicious Silicon Alley tech company and its possible links to international terrorism and who knows what else.

—— Uncut

Suspenseful and darkly humorous.

—— Michael Dirda , Times Literary Supplement

Intriguing, and probably the most straightforwardly readable of his books.

—— Gordon Brewer , Herald

A thrilling ride through the first tech bubble, filled with "bleeding edge" technology... Accomplished, funny and digressive.

—— Financial Times

Pynchon's take on the attack on the Twin Towers. Will he reject the conspiracy theories of the "truthers" or spin some new conspiracies of his own? I think the answer is both. But I wouldn't swear to it.

—— Gordon Brewer , Scotsman

· Pynchon delivered a piece of typically raggedy brilliance with Bleeding Edge.

—— Stuart Kelly , Scotsman

Engrossing, hilarious and shocking.

—— Jonathan Jones , Guardian

Pynchon’s high-energy writing crackles with dark wit and foreboding

—— Mail on Sunday

Playful and paranoid New York noir

—— Adam Boulton , New Statesman

Readers will have to decide for themselves how they feel about an open-ended mystery, but for those who don’t care so much about the destination, the journey is more than worth it

—— Stephen Joyce , Nudge
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