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A restlessly experimental work that stretches the bounds of what the novel can achieve, Murmur is the lightly fictionalised account of the harrowing and bizarre treatment meted out to the computational genius Alan Turing following his arrest for gross indecency. Alec Pryor is subjected to brutally administered hormone injections and eventual chemical castration. Yet at the same time as the physical pain and emotional degradation take their toll, his brilliantly analytical mind cannot help but be fascinated by the psychological repercussions of his torture. Through epistolary sequences and Jungian dreamscapes, Eaves weaves an incredible narrative that probes deep-seated issues of gender, identity and the unquenchable power of the intellect.
Winner of the Wellcome Book Prize 2019
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.
Convicted of gross indecency with another male in 1952, Turing was sentenced to a regimen of punitive hormonal injection. He grew breasts, survived the year-long ordeal, but died in 1954. Verdict: suicide. Alec Pryor – the book’s avatar for Turing – is caught between fascination and horror as he becomes a new version of himself.
The novel asks: what does great bodily change (torture) do to a person’s mind? The bulk of the book is a sequence of dreams and letters; these are bookended by extracts from a fictional journal that show a brilliant intellect struggling to come to terms with the effects of that change. It further asks: how does a mathematician, so used to removing personal bias from analysis – the sine qua non of scientific method – fit the personal experience of pain/joy/love back into a neutral explanatory scheme?
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 9781786899378
Number of pages: 192
Weight: 145 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 11 mm
Edition: Main
MEDIA REVIEWS
A really extraordinary book, unlike any other - MAX PORTER
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
Hugely impressive . . . [Murmur] will grip your mind in the very first pages, break your heart halfway through, and in the end, strangely, unexpectedly, restore your faith in human beings and their endless capacity for resilience . . . A future classic - ELIF SHAFAK, Wellcome Book Prize chair of judges
An extraordinary exploration of dreams, consciousness, science and the future - New Scientist, Books of the Year
Murmur is a fully achieved literary experiment, digging deep into all the dimensions of human consciousness - Goldsmiths Prize judges
Endlessly rewarding, it is a shining example of the moral and imaginative possibilities of fiction - Justine Jordan, Guardian, Books of the Year
Astonishing - GUY GUNARATNE, author of IN OUR MAD AND FURIOUS CITY
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