MICHEL FABER is the internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed author of The Crimson Petal and the White, Under the Skin—shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award—and several other books. Faber has won many short story awards and his writing has appeared in Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, among others. He lives in Scotland.
A New Yorker Best Book of 2014
An NPR Great Read of 2014
A New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2014
Selected as one of the Independent’s Books of the Year 2014
An io9.com Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Book of 2014
An ABA Indie Next Pick
A Fresno Bee Favorite Book of 2014
A Guardian Writers Pick of 2014, Selected by Jackie Kay
Selected as one of Kansas City Star’s 100 Best Books of 2014
Selected by Financial Times’ David Mitchell as a Favorite Book of
2014
A Book Riot Best Book of 2014
A BookBrowse Top Book of 2014
Goodreads.com Best Book of the Month
A Kirkus Must-reads
A Barnes & Noble Fiction Selection, Top Books for the Holiday
Season
A ShelfAwareness Best Books of 2014 Honorable Mention A Minnesota
Public Radio Best Books of 2014 Selection Publishers Lunch news
editor Sarah Weinman’s best of the year list, honorable mention
A Rick Riordan Favorite Read of 2014
A PopMatters Best Books of 2014
“Defiantly unclassifiable. . . . The Book of Strange New Things
squeezes its genre ingredients to yield a meditation on suffering,
love and the origins of religious faith. . . . Faber reminds us
there is a literature of enchantment, which invites the reader to
participate in the not-real in order to wake from a dream of
reality to the ineffability, strangeness, and brevity of life on
Earth.” —Marcel Theroux, The New York Times Book Review (cover
review)
“Provocative, unsettling.” —People
“Profoundly moving. . . . . A vivid portrait of a distant galaxy,
reinforced by a narrative that is deeply, emotionally evocative.”
—USA Today
“Elegant. . . . A lovely, thought-provoking meditation on love and
faith and the never-ending mysteries of the natural world.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Eerie and ambitious. . . . Faber is a genuinely gifted storyteller
and his novel gains resonance and tidal force in its final third.”
—The New York Times
“Faber illustrates, movingly, the impossibility of adequate
communication in the face of life-changing experience. . . . Rich
and memorable.” —The New Yorker
“The Book of Strange New Things will blow you away…Powerful… Even
beyond its power as a story of cross-cultural encounters, and the
questions it makes you ask about the place of humanity in the
universe, Book of Strange New Things is also worth
reading as a great personal story of a man and his wife, as their
relationship faces the ultimate test..Fantastic.”—io9.com
“Fascinating…Poignant…Remarkable… Despite its bizarre setting and
all the elements of an interplanetary opera, this is a novel of
profound spiritual intimacy…. I relished every chance to
cloister myself away with “The Book of Strange New Things”…[It]
offers exactly what I crave: a state of mingled familiarity and
alienness that leaves us with questions we can’t answer — or
forget.”—Ron Charles, Washington Post
“One of the best books I’ve ever read. . . . It’s a love story, and
the last line destroyed me.” —Emily St. John Mandel, The
Millions
“Faber's great strength, trotted out right from the opening pages —
this ability to write believable, lovely, flawed and inept
characters. To animate his creations by exposing their great loves
and human frailties, and to make us want, somehow, to follow along
behind them…Faber tells a beautifully human story of love, loss,
faith and the sometimes uncrossable distances between
people.”—NPR.org, “All Things Considered”
“Harrowing, wrenching. . . . A bold and unexpected work of beauty.
. . . Faber’s sincerity keeps The Book of Strange New Things
honest, and his talent steers him away from cliché.” —The New
Republic
“A wonderful adventure story, a quasi-science fiction tale and a
probing examination of a marriage. . . . A truly strange and
wonderful novel. . . . Please read Michel Faber’s The Book of
Strange New Things. You won't regret it.”—Cleveland
Plain-Dealer
“[A] masterpiece” —Cosmopolitan
“I would almost like to say, ‘Read this book,’ and leave it with
that. Because its charms, and they are considerable, are so tied
with discovering what the heck is going on. That challenges a
reviewer, because almost anything I tell you will spoil a moment of
discovery…the writing is such a pleasure.”—Dallas Morning News
“A bracing, rewarding read.”—Kansas City Star
“[Faber] approaches this interplanetary saga as an expert genre
traveler. . . . [His] potent new amalgam of sci-fi and spirituality
puts him within rocket range of David Mitchell.” —New York
“Intergalactic in scope.” —Reuters
“This is a big novel . . . but the reader is pulled through it at
some pace by the gothic sense of anxiety that pervades and taints
every element. . . . Astonishing and deeply affecting.” —The
Guardian
“A novel so full of ideas, so charged by plot, so odd and
wonderful, and written with astonishing emotional precision. There
are some novels that come along every now and again, when writing a
review seems superfluous and all one wants to do is to grab someone
by the shoulders and say: “Look, just read the damn thing!” This is
one of them. Michel Faber always has had an astonishing ability to
make the strange believable and the alien real, but in this
thoughtful, deeply moving page-turner, he excels himself.” —The
Scotsman
“A hugely serious story about the testing of religious faith. . . .
When [Peter’s] spiritual crisis does indeed hit it is as gripping
as any thriller. . . . A work of originality and insight.” —The
Times
“A moving human drama disguised as a gripping science fiction tale.
. . . Magnificently bold and addictive. . . . A book quite unlike
any other I've ever read.” —The Sunday Times
“Faber’s new novel grapples with [what it means to be human]
in unusually direct terms. . . . The fascination of [his] prose
style is its lack of sensationalism. His voice on the page is
serene and oddly innocent. . . . One might call The Book of Strange
New Things sci-fi, speculative fiction, literary fiction—or maybe
just welcome it, thankfully, with a ‘Never before now.’” —The
Independent (UK)
“Contemporary literary fiction rarely provides a Victorian-length
magical mystery tour along the trail of breathtaking
narrative…[yet] Michel Faber’s vast new storytelling
extravaganza, The Book of Strange New Things, is that kind of
novel. It embodies a wondrous and sorrowful experience you don’t
just read, but live.”—Toronto Star
“Spellbinding, heartbreaking and mind-bending. . . . This is very
much a book that rewards re-reading; its subtle echoes and wisps of
allusion reverberate across the text. . . . The Book Of Strange New
Things is Faber’s strongest, most plangent and most intellectually
gleeful novel. It is affecting as much as it is challenging. . . .
Bold, brave, brilliant. . . . It’s also, by the way, the most
wonderful love story.” —Scottish Review of Books
“Brilliant, and disquieting. . . . Faber’s novel is entirely true
to itself and wonderfully original. It makes a fine update to
Walter M. Miller Jr.’s Canticle for Leibowitz, with some Marilynne
Robinson-like homespun theology thrown in for good measure. . . . A
profoundly religious exploration of inner turmoil.” —Kirkus
(starred review)
“A marvelously creative and intricate novel, thought-provoking and
arresting.” —Booklist
“A monumental, genre-defying novel over ten years in the making,
Michel Faber’s The Book of Strange New Things is a masterwork from
a writer in full command of his many talents.”—Book Browse,
Selected as a Top Book of 2014
“The book wears its strong premise and mixture of Biblical and SF
tropes extremely well.”—Publishers Weekly
“At the heart of The Book of Strange New Things is one
question: Whom—or what—do you love, and what are you willing
to do for that love (or not willing)? The result is a
novel of marvel and wonderment with a narrative engine like a
locomotive.” —Yann Martel
“In my opinion The Book of Strange New Things is Michel Faber’s
second masterpiece, quite different to The Crimson Petal and the
White but every bit as luminescent and memorable. It is a
portrait of a living, breathing relationship, frayed by
distance. It is an enquiry into the mountains faith can move
and the mountains faith can’t move. It is maniacally
gripping. It is vibrant with wit and overcast with prescience
and social commentary. Like all superlative science fiction,
its real subject is that most mystifying of alien species,
humanity. I didn’t so much read The Book of Strange New Things as
inhabit it, the way you inhabited that handful of books which, as a
kid, first got you hooked on this wonderful drug known as reading.”
—David Mitchell
“Michel Faber’s The Book of Strange New Things certainly lives up
to its title. Faber, as he showed in Under the Skin, does
strangeness brilliantly. I can’t remember being so continually and
unfailingly surprised by any book for a long time, and part of the
surprise is the tenderness and delicacy with which he shows an
emotional relationship developing in one direction while withering
in another. I found it completely compelling and believable, and
admired it enormously.” —Philip Pullman
“Weird and disturbing, like any work of genius, this novel haunted
me for the seven nights I spent reading it, and haunts me still. A
story of faith that will mesmerize believers and non-believers
alike, a story of love in the face of the Apocalypse, a story of
humanity set in an alien world—The Book of Strange New
Things is desperately beautiful, sad, and unforgettable.”
—David Benioff
“Intriguing…both painful and compelling. And when you find out the
answers to some of the novel's central mysteries . . . Well, I
won't give anything away, but the answers pack a punch.”—Rick
Riordan
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