Pure - Couverture souple

'Brilliance distilled... it thrills and expands the mind' Daily Telegraph

In 1785, Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young, provincial engineer, is charged by the king with demolishing Paris's oldest cemetery. At first Baratte sees this as a chance to clear the burden of history, but soon begins to suspect that its destruction might be a prelude to his own...

Hailed as 'one of our most skilful chroniclers of the human heart and mind' (The Sunday Times), Andrew Miller is one of the foremost writers of his generation. Pure, his sixth novel, was named Costa Novel of the Year and went on to win the Costa Book of the Year Award in 2011. This paperback edition, published to celebrate Sceptre's 30th anniversary, features an exclusive new afterword by the author.

'His writing is a source of wonder and delight' Hilary Mantel

Andrew Miller's first novel, Ingenious Pain, was published by Sceptre in 1997 and greeted as the debut of an outstanding new writer. 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 was followed by Casanova, then Oxygen, which was shortlisted for both the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award in 2001, The Optimists, and One Morning Like A Bird. In 2011, his sixth novel, Pure, was published to great acclaim and went on to win the Costa Book of the Year Award.

Andrew Miller's novels have been translated into thirty languages. Born in Bristol in 1960, he has lived in Spain, Japan, France and Ireland, and currently lives in Somerset.