The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds [0]
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Autumn
Winter
Spring
Summer
Autumn
Winter
Spring
Acknowledgements
Praise for The Quickening Maze
Shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize
“Exceptional . . . like a lucid dream: earthy and true, but shifting, metamorphic—the word-perfect fruit of a poet’s sharp eye and novelist’s limber reach.”
—The Times (London)
“[Foulds is] one of the most interesting and talented writers of his generation.”
—The Times Literary Supplement (London)
“Impressive . . . simultaneously poised and flowing in its urgency.”
—The Guardian (London)
“The world [Foulds] evokes . . . is conjured up with remarkable intensity and economy of means. It is impossible to guess where Foulds will travel next in his fiction, but it is safe to assume that the journey with him will be well worth taking.”
—The Sunday Times (London)
“This poetic novel soars. . . . All is raised in pitch and definition by the prurient excitement of Foulds’ very twenty-first-century lust for life. . . . deeply believable . . . alluring.”
—The Independent (London)
“The Quickening Maze is a remarkable and passionate book. The worlds it creates, the forest and the asylum, and the characters that inhabit them are drawn with a wonderfully strange poetic intensity. It is a wholly original vision, impossible to forget.”
—Patrick McGrath, author of Spider and Trauma
“This is a novel that sees its varied cast of compelling characters, all travelling their separate but interlocking journeys, as it sees the natural world—with a tender and scrupulous eye. What I love most about The Quickening Maze is its quietness, the silence that makes you lean in until you hear its lovely song.”
—Nadeem Aslam, author of Maps for Lost Lovers
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE QUICKENING MAZE
Adam Foulds was born in 1974, took a Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia and now lives in South London. His first novel, The Truth About These Strange Times, was published in 2007 and he was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year in 2008. His book-length narrative poem, The Broken Word, was shortlisted for a number of awards, including the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and won the 2008 Costa Poetry Award.
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
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First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape,
an imprint of The Random House Group Limited 2009
Published in Penguin Books 2010
Copyright © Adam Foulds, 2009
All rights reserved
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Foulds, Adam, 1974-
The quickening maze / Adam Foulds.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-44220-3
1. Clare, John, 1793-1864—Mental health—Fiction. 2. Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron, 1809-1892—Fiction. 3. Poets, English—19th century—Mental health—Fiction. 4. Psychiatric hospitals—England—London—History—19th century—Fiction. 5. Mentally ill—Commitment and detention—England—London—History—19th century—Fiction. 6. London (England)—Social conditions—19th century—Fiction. I. Title. PR6106.O95Q’.92—dc22 2009040218
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