The Seed Collectors
- 21 Apr 2016
- 9781847679222
- £12.99
- 384 pp
- 129×198mm
- 2 Jul 2015
- 9781782111801
- £10.39
- 384 pp
In a few words
The seductive new novel from the bestselling author of The End of Mr. Y, full of life, death, desire and family trees
In a few words
The long-awaited new novel from the bestselling author of The End of Mr. Y
Entrancing
Neil Gaiman
A family saga of human fallibility, love, eccentricity, sex, spirituality, and of a lost, legendary, coincidentally lethal route to absolute transcendence . . . [Thomas] is a splendid novelist
William Gibson
The Seed Collectors is entrancing: it's a sharply observed contemporary novel of real people and real plants and real desire and real hurt, and it's somehow also one of the sharpest fantasies I've encountered. A sour-and-sweet delight
Neil Gaiman
Simultaneously sharply-drawn and dreamlike, often hilarious, The Seed Collectors is a baroque family saga of human fallibility, love, eccentricity, sex, spirituality, and of a lost, legendary, coincidentally lethal route to absolute transcendence. Scarlett Thomas is a splendid novelist
William Gibson
More about
the book
What secrets are hiding in your family tree?
Great Aunt Oleander is dead. To each of her nearest and dearest she has left a seed pod. The seed pods might be deadly, but then again they might also contain the secret of enlightenment . . .
A complex and fiercely contemporary tale of inheritance, enlightenment, life, death, desire and family trees, The Seed Collectors is the most important novel yet from one of the world’s most daring and brilliant writers.
More about
the book
“I have no idea why everyone thinks nature is so benign and glorious and wonderful. All nature is trying to do is kill us as efficiently as possible.”
Great Aunt Oleander is dead. To each of her nearest and dearest she has left a seed pod. The seed pods might be deadly, but then again they might also contain the secret of enlightenment. Not that anyone has much time for enlightenment. Fleur, left behind at the crumbling Namaste House, must step into Oleander’s role as guru to lost and lonely celebrities. Bryony wants to lose the weight she put on after her botanist parents disappeared, but can’t stop drinking. And Charlie struggles to make sense of his life after losing the one woman he could truly love.
A complex and fiercely contemporary tale of inheritance, enlightenment, life, death, desire and family trees, The Seed Collectors is the most important novel yet from one of the world’s most daring and brilliant writers. As Henry James said of George Eliot’s Middlemarch, The Seed Collectors is a ‘treasurehouse of detail’ revealing all that it means to be connected, to be part of a society, to be part of the universe and to be human.
Positively luminous - funny, daring, fizzing with ideas and altogether captivating
A far-out botanical adventure in ways which are brutally funny and profound all at once. Barbed, casually genius, philosophical and intensely readable. A joy
Matt Haig
Filthily gorgeous . . . Imagine Muriel Spark's disreputable niece
A delightful compound of fantasy and traditional family saga... a modern fairytale, with flashes that are savagely funny
Scarlett Thomas is one of my favourite writers ever and The Seed Collectors might be her best yet. She fuses the comically everyday with a far-out botanical adventure in ways which are brutally funny and profound all at once. Barbed, casually genius, philosophical and intensely readable. A joy
Matt Haig
Thomas has the mesmerising power of a great storyteller
[Thomas] is the laureate of the sardonic and the sarcastic. Imagine Muriel Spark's disreputable niece, punky and porny and puncturing every balloon of ego. The novel is outré and extravagant, unremitting and unrepentant, sweet and sour and salty
Positively luminous - funny, daring, fizzing with ideas and altogether captivating
