Longlisted for theALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction 2021
Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2020
London,1938. In the suburbs of the city,an ordinary young housewife has become the eye in a storm of chaos.
In Alma Fielding's modest home,china flies off the shelves,eggs fly through the air; stolen jewellery appears on her fingers,white mice crawl out of her handbag,beetles appear from under her gloves; in the middle of a car journey,a terrapin materialises on her lap.
Nandor Fodor - a Jewish-Hungarian refugee and chief ghost hunter for the International Institute for Psychical Research - reads of the case,and hastens to the scene of the haunting. But when Fodor starts his scrupulous investigation,he discovers that the case is even stranger than it seems.
By unravelling Alma's peculiar history,he finds a different and darker type of haunting: trauma,alienation,loss - and the foreshadowing of a nation's worst fears. As the spectre of Fascism lengthens over Europe,and as Fodor's obsession with the case deepens,Alma becomes ever more disturbed.
With rigour,daring and insight,the award-winning pioneer of non-fiction writing Kate Summerscale shadows Fodor's enquiry,delving into long-hidden archives to find the human story behind a very modern haunting.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLCISBN: 9781408895474Number of pages: 368Weight: 300 gDimensions: 198 x 129 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
Expertly told,with all the twists and turns of a chilly novel by Wilkie Collins or Barbara Vine...The more Summerscale delves,the more she finds out about the hidden compartments of the human mind'- Craig Brown
'She has turned a sepia photograph into a film that runs through the mind in glorious and unimpeachable Technicolor'- The Observer
'Summerscale's brilliance lies in charting,with beautiful precision,a story's strange echoes and reverberations'- The Mail on Sunday
'No other writer could have made the case so fascinating and so vivid...It would be impossible to read this dry-eyed'- The Spectator
'An extraordinary book which will stay with you'- The Daily Express
'Gripping... Summerscale is an exquisite storyteller. She is judicious in her use of detail,subtle in her unspoken connections between the past and the present'- The Times
'The finest documentary writing'- John le Carre
'Absolutely riveting'- Sarah Waters
Kate Summerscale
Kate Summerscale is a British author and journalist,best known for her celebrated works of narrative non-fiction,which include the award-winning The Suspicions of Mr Whicher.
Visit the Kate Summerscale author page
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