The Quickening Maze: A Novel

Adam Foulds

Nov 2010 · Recorded Books · Narrated by Graeme Malcolm

About this audiobook

Based on real events, The Quickening Maze won over UK critics and readers alike with its rapturous prose and vivid exploration of poetry and madness. In 1837, after years of struggling with alcoholism and depression, the great nature poet John Clare finds himself in High Beach-a mental institution located in Epping Forest on the outskirts of London. It is not long before another famed writer, the young Alfred Tennyson, moves nearby and grows entwined in the catastrophic schemes of the hospital's owner, the peculiar Dr. Matthew Allen, his lonely adolescent daughter, and a coterie of mysterious local characters. With lyrical grace, the cloistered world of High Beach and its residents are brought richly to life in this enchanting book. "Exceptional . earthy and true, but shifting, metamorphic-the word-perfect fruit of a poet's sharp eye and novelist's limber reach."-Times (London)

About the author

Adam Foulds was born in 1974 and lives in south London. In 2001 he graduated from the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia. In 2007 he won a Betty Trask Award for The Truth About These Strange Times and two years later, in 2009, his novel The Quickening Maze was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.