Sarah Perry

‘The Gothic,’ Sarah Perry told Waterstones, ‘is fundamentally anti-status-quo; it’s a way for people to express transgressive thoughts.’ In three novels - After Me Comes the Flood, The Essex Serpent and Melmoth – the Chelmsford-born Sarah Perry has boldly established herself at the front rank of British novelists, wielding an acute sense of place and history with a wildly irrepressible energy. Now a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Sarah Perry’s landmark gothic fantasy The Essex Serpent was awarded the Waterstones Book of the Year for 2016.