Hawksmoor
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Edition: 1st ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: No markings
A masterwork of postmodern Gothic fiction, Hawksmoor weaves together two narratives separated by centuries — one following Nicholas Dyer, an 18th-century architect who secretly consecrates his London churches to dark, occult forces through ritual murder, and the other chronicling a modern-day detective named Nicholas Hawksmoor, who investigates a series of baffling murders occurring at those very same churches. Peter Ackroyd constructs the novel with extraordinary structural ingenuity, alternating between archaic prose that authentically mirrors the cadences of early 18th-century English and a terse, unsettling modern voice, drawing the two timelines into an eerie, inescapable parallel. The novel argues that London itself is a living palimpsest, haunted by the violence and ritual embedded in its very stones, and that history does not simply pass but accumulates, pressing down upon the present with sinister weight. Atmospheric, intellectually daring, and deeply unsettling, Hawksmoor stands as one of the defining works of late 20th-century British literature, blending historical fiction, detective noir, and metaphysical horror into a seamless and unforgettable whole.
Author: Peter Ackroyd
Format: Hardback
Published: 1985, Hamish Hamilton
Genre: Historical fiction
Edition: 1st ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: No markings
A masterwork of postmodern Gothic fiction, Hawksmoor weaves together two narratives separated by centuries — one following Nicholas Dyer, an 18th-century architect who secretly consecrates his London churches to dark, occult forces through ritual murder, and the other chronicling a modern-day detective named Nicholas Hawksmoor, who investigates a series of baffling murders occurring at those very same churches. Peter Ackroyd constructs the novel with extraordinary structural ingenuity, alternating between archaic prose that authentically mirrors the cadences of early 18th-century English and a terse, unsettling modern voice, drawing the two timelines into an eerie, inescapable parallel. The novel argues that London itself is a living palimpsest, haunted by the violence and ritual embedded in its very stones, and that history does not simply pass but accumulates, pressing down upon the present with sinister weight. Atmospheric, intellectually daring, and deeply unsettling, Hawksmoor stands as one of the defining works of late 20th-century British literature, blending historical fiction, detective noir, and metaphysical horror into a seamless and unforgettable whole.