Pure by Andrew Miller
⭐ Out now: The Land in Winter, shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025 ⭐ Pure: an enthralling tale of an extraordinary year in pre-revolutionary Paris Winner of the Costa Book of the Year Award 'Irresistibly compelling' Sunday Telegraph 'Dazzling' Guardian 'A work of beauty' The Times Deep in the heart of Paris, its oldest cemetery is, by 1785, overflowing, tainting the very breath of those who live nearby. Into their midst comes Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young, provincial engineer charged by the king with demolishing it. At first Baratte sees this as a chance to clear the burden of history, a fitting task for a modern man of reason. But before long, he begins to suspect that the destruction of the cemetery might be a prelude to his own. Praise for Andrew Miller 'Andrew Miller's writing is a source of wonder and delight' Hilary Mantel 'One of our most skilful chroniclers of the human heart and mind' Sunday Times 'One of the best writers at work today' Telegraph 'A wonderful storyteller' Spectator 'One of those rare novelists who can rock up in any time and place and convincingly inhabit that particular historical moment' The Times
His recreation of pre-Revolutionary Paris is extraordinarily vivid and imaginative, and his story is so gripping that you'll put your life on hold to finish it * The Times *
Vivid and compelling * Times Literary Supplement *
Enthralling . . superbly researched, brilliantly narrated and movingly resolved * Observer *
Elegant * Independent *
Quietly powerful, consistently surprising, Pure is a fine addition to substantial body of work * Financial Times *
Almost dreamlike, a realistic fantasy, a violent fairytale for adults * Irish Times *
Every so often a historical novel comes along that is so natural, so far from pastiche, so modern, that it thrills and expands the mind. Pure is one . . . Exquisite inside and out, Pure is a near-faultless thing: detailed, symbolic and richly evocative of a time, place and man in dangerous flux. It is brilliance distilled, with very few impurities * Sunday Telegraph *
It draws you in with hallucinatory power to seething Paris on the brink of revolution . . . images remain in your mind long after you reach the last page * Daily Mail *
Superb . . . The writing throughout is crystalline, uncontrived, striking and intelligent. You could call it pure * Literary Review *
Miller writes like a poet, with a deceptive simplicity - his sentences and images are intense distillations, conjuring the fleeting details of existence with clarity. He is also a very humane writer, whose philosophy is tempered always with an understanding of the flaws and failings of ordinary people . . . Pure defies the ordinary conventions of storytelling, slipping dream-like between lucidity and a kind of abstracted elusiveness . . . As Miller proves with this dazzling novel, it is not certainty we need but courage * Guardian *
A work of beauty embroidered by Miller's exquisite gift for poetic description . . . it is a delight. And though a historical novel with decay its running theme, the writing is dazzlingly fresh and modern * The Times *
A pacey, well-constructed narrative in which rape, suicide, love and unexplained deaths all play a part. Miller wears his learning lightly and infuses his story with humanity and warmth * Mail on Sunday *
The book pulls off an ambitious project: to evoke a complex historical period through a tissue of deftly selected details * Sunday Times *
Very atmospheric . . . Although the theme may sound macabre, Miller's eloquent novel overflows with vitality and colour. It is packed with personal and physical details that evoke 18th-century Paris with startling immediacy . . . If you enjoyed Patrick Süskind's Perfume, you'll love this * Daily Express *
Alive to the dramatic possibilities offered by late-18th-century Paris, a fetid and intoxicating city on the brink of revolution . . . Miller intimately and pacily imagines how it might have felt to witness it * Daily Telegraph *
Miller generates dynamic comedy and drama from juxtaposing the earthy, bodily realities of the Enlightenment against lofty aspirations of reason and progress. It's engrossing historical fiction * The Age *
Some stories are too wonderful - too filled with wonders - to set in the present. They can't really be called historical fiction because they don't serve history so much as plunder it to invent what might have been. Such is the case with Pure * New York Times Book Review *
Vivid and compelling * Times Literary Supplement *
Enthralling . . superbly researched, brilliantly narrated and movingly resolved * Observer *
Elegant * Independent *
Quietly powerful, consistently surprising, Pure is a fine addition to substantial body of work * Financial Times *
Almost dreamlike, a realistic fantasy, a violent fairytale for adults * Irish Times *
Every so often a historical novel comes along that is so natural, so far from pastiche, so modern, that it thrills and expands the mind. Pure is one . . . Exquisite inside and out, Pure is a near-faultless thing: detailed, symbolic and richly evocative of a time, place and man in dangerous flux. It is brilliance distilled, with very few impurities * Sunday Telegraph *
It draws you in with hallucinatory power to seething Paris on the brink of revolution . . . images remain in your mind long after you reach the last page * Daily Mail *
Superb . . . The writing throughout is crystalline, uncontrived, striking and intelligent. You could call it pure * Literary Review *
Miller writes like a poet, with a deceptive simplicity - his sentences and images are intense distillations, conjuring the fleeting details of existence with clarity. He is also a very humane writer, whose philosophy is tempered always with an understanding of the flaws and failings of ordinary people . . . Pure defies the ordinary conventions of storytelling, slipping dream-like between lucidity and a kind of abstracted elusiveness . . . As Miller proves with this dazzling novel, it is not certainty we need but courage * Guardian *
A work of beauty embroidered by Miller's exquisite gift for poetic description . . . it is a delight. And though a historical novel with decay its running theme, the writing is dazzlingly fresh and modern * The Times *
A pacey, well-constructed narrative in which rape, suicide, love and unexplained deaths all play a part. Miller wears his learning lightly and infuses his story with humanity and warmth * Mail on Sunday *
The book pulls off an ambitious project: to evoke a complex historical period through a tissue of deftly selected details * Sunday Times *
Very atmospheric . . . Although the theme may sound macabre, Miller's eloquent novel overflows with vitality and colour. It is packed with personal and physical details that evoke 18th-century Paris with startling immediacy . . . If you enjoyed Patrick Süskind's Perfume, you'll love this * Daily Express *
Alive to the dramatic possibilities offered by late-18th-century Paris, a fetid and intoxicating city on the brink of revolution . . . Miller intimately and pacily imagines how it might have felt to witness it * Daily Telegraph *
Miller generates dynamic comedy and drama from juxtaposing the earthy, bodily realities of the Enlightenment against lofty aspirations of reason and progress. It's engrossing historical fiction * The Age *
Some stories are too wonderful - too filled with wonders - to set in the present. They can't really be called historical fiction because they don't serve history so much as plunder it to invent what might have been. Such is the case with Pure * New York Times Book Review *
Andrew Miller's first novel, Ingenious Pain, was published by Sceptre in 1997. It won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for the best foreign novel published in Italy. It has been followed by Casanova, Oxygen, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award in 2001, The Optimists, One Morning Like a Bird, Pure, which won the Costa Book of the Year Award in 2011, The Crossing, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free, The Slowworm's Song and The Land in Winter, which won the Winston Graham Historical Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2025. Andrew Miller's novels have been published in translation in twenty countries. Born in Bristol in 1960, he currently lives in Somerset.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781444724288 |
| ISBN 10 | 1444724282 |
| Title | Pure |
| Author | Andrew Miller |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Hodder & Stoughton |
| Year published | 2012-01-05 |
| Number of pages | 352 |
| Prizes | Winner of Costa Book of the Year 2011, Winner of Costa Novel Award 2011 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |