Maxwell's Demon

Steven Hall author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Canongate Books

Published:4th Feb '21

£16.99

Available to order, but very limited on stock - if we have issues obtaining a copy, we will let you know.

Maxwell's Demon cover

'Deliciously diabolical' Chris Brookmyre
'Wickedly playful' M.R. Carey

Thomas Quinn is having the strangest autumn . . .
Nine years ago, his mentor Andrew Black wrote a million-copy-selling mystery novel - and then disappeared. Now could it be that Thomas is being stalked by the hero of Black's book? And that new answerphone message sounds a lot like his own father. His father who has been dead for years.

Thomas's wife Imogen usually has the answers but she's on the other side of the world. If he can just find Black, perhaps Thomas might start finding some answers . . .

With the same white-knuckle thrills as Hall's first novel, The Raw Shark Texts, Maxwell's Demon is a freewheeling investigation into the magic power locked inside the alphabet, love through the looking glass, the bond between parents and children, and, at its heart, the quest for meaning in a chaotic and untidy world.

Thirteen years after The Raw Shark Texts, Steven Hall comes back with another dazzlingly smart postmodern treat. Maxwell's Demon is both steeped in high European theory - think Calvino and Eco - and enormously enjoyable * * Observer * *
Ingeniously plotted and compulsively well-paced, a blend of detective story and science fiction with an epistemology course thrown in * * Sunday Times * *
A postmodern mystery . . . Ingenious fun . . . Showily postmodern, full of odd typographical elements, altered realities and intertextual jokes . . . Maxwell's Demon is consistently fun and often impressive * * Guardian, Book of the Day * *
An engaging, pacy mystery as well as an exploration of reality, entropy and the language of a modern creative landscape . . . The book is full of conceptual and typographic trickery and it's soaked in an appreciation of the written word * * Independent, Books of the Month * *
A Pynchonesque, footnote-and theory-heavy mystery novel that's as postmodern as they come . . . A smart, teasing and (above all) lovable mystery tale . . . Superb * * Telegraph * *
Dazzlingly clever, wickedly playful, devastatingly poignant -- M.R. CAREY
Labyrinthine, mind-twisting and deliciously diabolical, yet also unexpectedly warm-hearted. Maxwell's Demon is fantastic -- CHRIS BROOKMYRE
As melancholy as it is captivating. Whether pertaining to thermodynamics or company kept around a manger or autumn leaves born of text and set free, Maxwell's Demon is hard to put down. Even when you're done -- MARK Z DANIELEWSKI
A cracking detective story that seems to be investigating its own existence -- JEFF NOON
Moves at an exhilarating lick . . . The genius of the book is that despite it seeming like an elegant orrery, all these wheels within wheels are a carapace, a psychic armour against a grief (and it's not the grief you were expecting). Beneath this truly beautiful astrolabe is a beating human heart -- Stuart Kelly * * Scotsman * *

  • Short-listed for RSL Encore Award 2022 (UK)

ISBN: 9781847672469

Dimensions: 220mm x 162mm x 33mm

Weight: 611g

352 pages

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