Join us for an evening with internationally bestselling Sarah Perry as we introduce her brand-new work of non-fiction DEATH OF AN ORDINARY MAN, on the weekend following its release. We will also discuss her most recent novel, the luminous, Booker Prize long-listed, ENLIGHTENMENT and reflect on the success of her body of work to date.
 
DEATH OF AN ORDINARY MAN
‘Now I understand there are no ordinary lives – that every death is the end of a single event in time’s history: an event so improbable as to be miraculous, and irreplaceable in every particular.'
Sarah Perry's father-in-law, David, died at home nine days after a cancer diagnosis and having previously been in good health. The speed of his illness outstripped that of the NHS and social care, so the majority of nursing fell to Sarah and her husband. They witnessed what happens to the body and spirit, hour by hour, as it approaches death.
Unflinching and profoundly moving, Sarah Perry confronts the taboo surrounding death and shows us how to confront all of the terror and beauty that comes with the end of life - and how the saddest thing she has ever seen is also the best thing she's ever done.
 
ENLIGHTENMENT
Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay have lived all their lives in the small Essex town of Aldleigh. Though separated in age by three decades, the pair are kindred spirits – torn between their religion and their desire to explore the world. But their friendship is ruptured by the arrival of love.
Over the course of twenty years, Thomas and Grace will find their lives brought back into orbit as a devastating story of passion and scientific adventure unfolds and Aldleigh’s unique mysteries are revealed.
 
Sarah Perry is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Enlightenment, Melmoth, The Essex Serpent and After Me Comes the Flood, and the non-fiction Essex Girls. She is a winner of the Waterstones Book of the Year Award and the British Book of the Year Award. Enlightenment was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025 and her other work has been nominated for major literary prizes including the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Folio Prize and the Costa Novel Award. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.