A STORY OF LOVE COMPLICATED BY TIME TRAVEL 'What a wonderful, strange, terrifying, brilliant novel this is' Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire New York, 2000. Kate and Ben meet at a party and immediately fall in love. It is the first year of the new millennium, the first year without a war anywhere in the world. The United Nations has just planted its flag on Mars, and a Green Party senator is about to become the first female president of the United States. Kate falls asleep, knowing that she is loved. London, 1593. Kate wakes as Emilia - the mistress of a nobleman - and finds the plague at her door. Afflicted by premonitions of a burnt and lifeless city, she sets out to save the world. Each decision she makes will change her life with Ben forever. A story of love and alternate universes, madness and time travel, The Heavens is a dream bound up in a strange awakening; it is a bewitching novel of what we have lost, and what we might yet be able to save.

The year's most mind-expanding love story

About the Author
Sandra Newman is the author of three previous novels; The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done, (shortlisted for The Guardian First Book Award), Cake and The Country of Ice Cream Star (longlisted for the Bailey's Prize for Women's Literature). She co-authored the hugely successful How Not to Write a Novel. She has also written The Western Lit Survival Kit, Read This Next, and a memoir, Changeling. She lives in New York.

Reviews
Bewitchingly complex...truly astonishing...capable of eliciting from even the most jaded reader both a kind of startled surprise and an unqualified admiration -- Sarah Perry * Spectator *
An electrifying novel of love, creativity and madness... playful, tender and heart breaking * Guardian *
[Newman] matches rich, pin-sharp, sometimes dandyish, sometimes economic prose with a wild imagination -- Matt Haig * Guardian *
Genre-defying... captivating... Millennia ahead of the game... readers will be drawn into this uncanny dream of a story by Newman's genius for summoning feeling * Observer *
Throughout Sandra Newman's new novel, there is an exquisitely calibrated strangeness... expertly tricked out... miraculously skilful...She is simply unerring, deeply read and possessed of a phenomenal ear for diction... immersively real... Like all dramas, it has a resolution, and one of such eye-popping metaphysical grandeur that I couldn't spoil it even if I wanted to * Irish Times *
A daring piece of counter-historical speculative romance... The surreal comic tone has a lot in common with Elif Batuman, Patrick deWitt and Ottessa Moshfegh... Intriguing * The Times *
A novel unlike any other... magical -- 'Our Pick of the Best Beach Reads for Every Taste' * Elle *
[Sandra Newman is] a writer of immense imagination and talent...quite unlike any other book you'll pick up this year -- 'Best New Books for May 2019' * Stylist *
A tour de force of a novel... gloriously bewildering...exceptional * Scotland on Sunday *
Beguiling * New Statesman *
Newman [writes with] agility and aplomb * TLS *
What a wonderful, strange, terrifying, brilliant novel this is -- Kamila Shamsie
I tore through The Heavens and loved it. It's unique and brilliant; a house made of trapdoors, where dreams are real and reality a dream. Through this strange labyrinth of 21st century New York and Renaissance England, it is love which deftly, movingly, finds the way -- Adam Foulds, author * The Quickening Maze *
I was bewitched by the ambition and charge of The Heavens, which is at once troubling and beautiful, emotionally resonant and fantastically strange -- Olivia Laing, author of * Crudo *
The Heavens, shifting restlessly between worlds, gently encouraging Elizabethan England into eccentric New York, rolling everything into a dreamy, desperate new reality, is everything we expect from Sandra Newman. It's strange but focused, beautifully written and put together, dangerously benign, comic and clever, bright as a knife -- M. John Harrison, author * Light *
Reading Sandra Newman's The Heavens is like falling up a brilliant flight of stairs. Inventive and moving and surprising on every level, it's a novel that doesn't just play with time and history and certainty: it turns those things inside out. I've been haunted by its characters and ideas ever since I reluctantly finished it -- Elizabeth McCracken, author * Thunderstruck & Other Stories *
I was bewitched by the ambition and charge of The Heavens, which is at once troubling and beautiful, emotionally resonant and fantastically strange -- Olivia Laing
Every one of The Heavens' pages feels like that first shuddering spark of attraction...quick, flirtatious * Dazed *
Richly observed and engaging... [Newman] is a writer of wild imaginings... The Heavens swiftly upends all expectations with its speculative strangeness * Sunday Times *
I love this book and I think of it like a real person... so elegiac and genuinely moving ... by the time I got to the end of it... I wanted to go back and read the beginning... you've got to read this book...unbelievably moving -- Helen Lewis * BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review *
It isn't long before this novel transcends such tropes to reach heights of brilliance * Irish Examiner *
Wonderfully weird...gleaming, frictionless prose -- Elizabeth Lowry * TLS *
The writing is so sleek and the pace is so nimble, nothing is belaboured... a delightful literary bon bon that really took me away, so transfixing -- Katie Puckrik * BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review *
A stunning, literary fairytale * Huffington Post *
So cleverly structured, it bears instant rereading * Mail on Sunday *
Astute, mesmeric and quite alarming, The Heavens is absolutely captivating * Press Association *
Really thought-provoking -- 'The Best Books to Read This May' * Red Magazine *
Absolutely captivating * Belfast Sunday Life *
Sumptuous, multi-layered...profound, serious... Newman is a clever and sophisticated writer...this haunting, pervasively sad novel hits a particularly vulnerable nerve * Big Issue *
Prepare to be transported * Totally Dublin *
Ambitious... Newman is a hugely versatile writer * The Week *
A tour de force of a novel... exceptional... [Newman] writes the most elegantly balanced prose...a formidable achievement... a bravura piece of work... a very good book * Scotsman *
This strikingly original, rich novel contains multitudes * I Paper *
[A] page-turner * Sunday Post *
Absorbing and clever...deftly executed...A great read * Four Shires Magazine *
A thrilling fable about love, creativity, madness and what it means to save or lose a world * Guardian *
Newman skilfully concocts a dizzying blend of contemporary utopianism, historical romance and time travelling fantasy while posing profound metaphysical philosophical questions * Irish Examiner *
A dizzying portrait of love and time travel... Beautiful * Red Magazine *
Weird and wonderful . . . a surprising and tender love story -- Best books of 2019 * I Paper *
The best book you've ever read -- Sarah Crossan * Irish Examiner *
Bewitching historical fiction wrapped in a tragic sci-fi love story... [it] will both break and remake your heart * In the Moment *
Imaginatively audacious, this is a novel whose pyrotechnics are backed by deep emotional truth -- Melissa Harrison, author of * All Among the Barley *
[The Heavens] transcends its labels...Newman lays in several solutions to her puzzle without ever privileging one. The line by line writing is masterful - crisp and surprising without ever feeling effortful - but what moved me the most was how suffused with grief the whole book is; a constant, aching undercurrent of sadness about the roads not travelled and the things we lose * Observer *
High-concept... This is a dazzling exploration of creativity and madness in the poignant, panic-tinged end times -- Best fiction of 2019 * Guardian *
'I was dazzled by Sandra Newman's The Heavens...it left me hugely envious of her confidence and skill -- Best Books of 2019 (chosen by Melissa Harrison) * Observer *



Book Information
ISBN 9781783784844
Author Sandra Newman
Format Hardback
Page Count 272
Imprint Granta Books
Publisher Granta Books
Weight(grams) 361g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 135mm * 16mm