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A Penguin Book Club Pick
From the bestselling author of Life After Life, a new novel that explores the repercussions of one young woman's espionage work during World War II.
In 1940, eighteen-year-old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past forever.
Ten years later, now a radio producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence.
Transcription is a work of rare depth and texture, a bravura modern novel of extraordinary power, wit, and empathy. It is a triumphant work of fiction from one of the best writers of our time. National Bestseller
International Bestseller
A New York Times Bestseller
Shortlisted for the British Book Awards' Book of the Year (Fiction)
A New York Times Editors' Choice
A Washington Post Notable Book of 2018
An NPR Best Book of 2018
A Slate Best Book of 2018
A Boston Globe Best Book of 2018
A BookPage Best Book of 2018
A Real Simple Best Book of 2018
A Goodreads Best Book of 2018
"[A] superb story of wartime espionage... Hilary Mantel once said of Atkinson's ground-breaking first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, that she had a 'game-plan more sophisticated than Dickens,' and that skill is more than evident in this latest offering... Remarkable... The sheer bravura of Atkinson's storytelling is such that you will find it impossible not to want to revisit those clues so cleverly placed, as you shake your head in disbelief at how effortlessly you have been taken in." -The Times Literary Supplement (TLS)
"[Transcription] never loses its sense of absurdity of human beings even in their most tragic or noble moments... How vehemently most novelists will wish to produce a masterpiece as good." -The Daily Telegraph (UK)
"[Transcription] is a major event... Atkinson loves her research, but she doesn't need much help concocting original stories that resemble no one else's and take the breath away." -The New York Times
"Atkinson's writing is, as always, heaven to read... It's mesmerizing, from every angle." -The Seattle Times
"Atkinson has predicated her enormously successful career upon giving readers intelligent and artful iterations of what they already know they like: made-up Johns and Janes, in realistically described settings, enacting a plot that's not only ingeniously constructed but, in the end, fully resolved... Yet Atkinson's exceptional reader-friendliness has always been a Trojan horse, a way of delivering something pointed in the guise of something smoothly familiar. She occupies that rare cultural sweet spot wherein she scoops up awards for artistic excellence while also reliably hitting the bestseller lists... There is no question that a large part of what makes Atkinson's work so cleverly, stealthily affecting is its sheep's clothing." -The New Yorker
"A triumph." -Good Housekeeping
"Atkinson is brilliant. Her characters are brilliant. Her command of the back-and-forth narrative, the un-fixedness of memory, the weight that guilt accrues over time and how we carry it is remarkable... Everything Atkinson does subverts the classic model of the spy story... It's that grunginess, that groundedness, that attention to the tiny, personal, low-stakes details ... that elevates Transcription." -NPR
"No other contemporary novelist has such supreme mastery of that sweet spot between high and low, literary and compulsively readable as Ka
From the bestselling author of Life After Life, a new novel that explores the repercussions of one young woman's espionage work during World War II.
In 1940, eighteen-year-old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past forever.
Ten years later, now a radio producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence.
Transcription is a work of rare depth and texture, a bravura modern novel of extraordinary power, wit, and empathy. It is a triumphant work of fiction from one of the best writers of our time. National Bestseller
International Bestseller
A New York Times Bestseller
Shortlisted for the British Book Awards' Book of the Year (Fiction)
A New York Times Editors' Choice
A Washington Post Notable Book of 2018
An NPR Best Book of 2018
A Slate Best Book of 2018
A Boston Globe Best Book of 2018
A BookPage Best Book of 2018
A Real Simple Best Book of 2018
A Goodreads Best Book of 2018
"[A] superb story of wartime espionage... Hilary Mantel once said of Atkinson's ground-breaking first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, that she had a 'game-plan more sophisticated than Dickens,' and that skill is more than evident in this latest offering... Remarkable... The sheer bravura of Atkinson's storytelling is such that you will find it impossible not to want to revisit those clues so cleverly placed, as you shake your head in disbelief at how effortlessly you have been taken in." -The Times Literary Supplement (TLS)
"[Transcription] never loses its sense of absurdity of human beings even in their most tragic or noble moments... How vehemently most novelists will wish to produce a masterpiece as good." -The Daily Telegraph (UK)
"[Transcription] is a major event... Atkinson loves her research, but she doesn't need much help concocting original stories that resemble no one else's and take the breath away." -The New York Times
"Atkinson's writing is, as always, heaven to read... It's mesmerizing, from every angle." -The Seattle Times
"Atkinson has predicated her enormously successful career upon giving readers intelligent and artful iterations of what they already know they like: made-up Johns and Janes, in realistically described settings, enacting a plot that's not only ingeniously constructed but, in the end, fully resolved... Yet Atkinson's exceptional reader-friendliness has always been a Trojan horse, a way of delivering something pointed in the guise of something smoothly familiar. She occupies that rare cultural sweet spot wherein she scoops up awards for artistic excellence while also reliably hitting the bestseller lists... There is no question that a large part of what makes Atkinson's work so cleverly, stealthily affecting is its sheep's clothing." -The New Yorker
"A triumph." -Good Housekeeping
"Atkinson is brilliant. Her characters are brilliant. Her command of the back-and-forth narrative, the un-fixedness of memory, the weight that guilt accrues over time and how we carry it is remarkable... Everything Atkinson does subverts the classic model of the spy story... It's that grunginess, that groundedness, that attention to the tiny, personal, low-stakes details ... that elevates Transcription." -NPR
"No other contemporary novelist has such supreme mastery of that sweet spot between high and low, literary and compulsively readable as Ka