Winner of the 2019 Wellcome Book Prize
Winner of the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize
Shortlisted for the 2018 Goldsmiths Prize
Shortlisted for the 2019 James Tait Black Prize
Longlisted for the 2019 Rathbones Folio Prize
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.
Formally audacious, daring in its intellectual inquiry and unwaveringly humane, Will Eaves's Murmur is a rare achievement.
"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 *
"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" - * Times Literary Supplement *
"An extraordinary exploration of dreams, consciousness, science and the future" - * New Scientist, Books of the Year *
"Endlessly rewarding, it is a shining example of the moral and imaginative possibilities of fiction" - * Guardian, Books of the Year *