Murmur

Will Eaves

Murmur by Will Eaves (Paperback ISBN 9781786899378) book cover

Available as Paperback, eBook

Murmur evokes the extraordinary life of Alan Turing, the beauty and sorrows of love, and the nature of consciousness. Winner of the Wellcome Prize and shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize

Winner of the 2019 Wellcome Book Prize
Winner of the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize
Shortlisted for the 2018 Goldsmiths Prize
Shortlisted for the 2019 James Tait Black Prize
Longlisted for the 2019 Rathbones Folio Prize

Taking its cue from the arrest and legally enforced chemical castration of the mathematician Alan Turing, Murmur is the account of a man who responds to intolerable physical and mental stress with love, honour and a rigorous, unsentimental curiosity about the ways in which we perceive ourselves and the world.

Formally audacious, daring in its intellectual inquiry and unwaveringly humane, Will Eaves’s Murmur is a rare achievement.


“A really extraordinary book, unlike any other”
Max Porter

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“The premise is startlingly ambitious: what if we could think our way into Alan Turing’s dreams? … Scrupulous, humane, sad and strange, [Murmur] is as bracingly intelligent as it is brave”
guardian

“Ambitious … Boldly different … Murmur opens your mind to a different kind of novel, one that forges a dialogue between art and science, one that celebrates the wonder of human consciousness”
the Times

“A novel forged from an immensely beautiful writing intelligence. Murmur is a fully achieved literary experiment, digging deep into all the dimensions of human consciousness, including state sanctioned savagery”
Deborah Levy

“Remarkable … Murmur’s transgressive power lies at the level both of language and of structure … Will Eaves has achieved one of the pinnacles of novelistic endeavour: he has given deep thought to human experience, and in doing so brought to life the “self-conscious wonder” of thought itself”
Sam Byers
times Literary Supplement


Will Eaves

Will Eaves is the author of five novels, including Murmur, and two collections of poems. Previously Arts Editor of the Times Literary Supplement, he now teaches writing at the University of Warwick. His work has appeared in the Guardian and the New Yorker and been shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and the Encore Award. Murmur won the Wellcome Book Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize, was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and the James Tait Black Prize, and was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize.

@WillEaves