The Warlow Experiment - Tapa dura

Críticas

Original and gripping ... builds to a satisfying and fittingly macabre climax. (Antonia Senior Times)

Rich period detail and grippingly peopled subplots about the era's radical insurgency and reactionary repression add engrossing depth to this compelling tale of a ruinously backfiring experiment. (Peter Kemp Sunday Times)

Original and beautifully written, this is a meaty, gripping novel of obsession gone sour (Elizabeth Buchan Daily Mail)

Smart and darkly entertaining (Jeffrey Burke Mail on Sunday)

Powerful, imaginative ... convincingly reflects the vernacular of many of the most important characters ... It is Nathan's scrupulous objectivity that enables the complexity of her characters to emerge ... For all the grim logic of its horrifying finale, what distinguished The Warlow Experiment above all is how Nathan ... treats her subjects with unfailing dignity and compassion. (Paul Binding Literary Review)

A dark tale of obsession, solitude and the human mind ... brings together vivid characters to explore the vulnerable foundations of sanity, rationality and civilisation. (The Herald)

Terrific (Saga)

Praise for Alix Nathan:
'She cuts against cliché, against the received version, against cosiness. She leaves her reader restless, curious, wanting more. She is an original, with a virtuoso touch.'

Reseña del editor

'An extraordinary, quite brilliant book' - C. J. Sansom
'Original and gripping' - The Times
'Powerful and unsettling' - Andrew Taylor
'Engrossing ... compelling' - The Sunday Times
'Powerful, imaginative' - Literary Review

What kind of person keeps a man underground for seven years?
And who would agree to be part of such an experiment?

Herbert Powyss lives on a small estate in the Welsh Marches, with enough time and income to pursue a gentleman's fashionable cultivation of exotic plants and trees. But he longs to make his mark in the field of science - something consequential enough to present to the Royal Society in London.

He hits on a radical experiment in isolation: for seven years a subject will inhabit three rooms in the cellar of the manor house, fitted out with books, paintings and even a chamber organ. Meals will arrive thrice daily via a dumbwaiter. The solitude will be totally unrelieved by any social contact; the subject will keep a diary of his daily thoughts and actions. The pay? Fifty pounds per annum, for life.

Only one man is desperate enough to apply for the job: John Warlow, a semi-literate labourer with a wife and six children to provide for. The experiment, a classic Enlightenment exercise gone more than a little mad, will have unforeseen consequences for all included. In this seductive tale of self-delusion and obsession, Alix Nathan has created an utterly transporting historical novel which is both elegant and unforgettably sinister.