Specimen Days

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of ‘The Hours’, time, technology and love are the central concerns of a provocative novel that calls to mind David Mitchell’s ‘Cloud Atlas’.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of ‘The Hours’, time, technology and love are the central concerns of a provocative novel that calls to mind David Mitchell’s ‘Cloud Atlas’.Lucas, Catherine, Simon: three characters meet time and again in the three linked narratives that form ‘Specimen Days’. The first, a science fiction of the past, tells of a boy whose brother was ‘devoured’ by the machine he operated. The second is a noirish thriller set in our century, as a police psychologist attempts to track down a group of terrorists. And the third and final strand accompanies two strange beings into the future.A novel of connecting and reconnecting, inspired by the writings of the great visionary poet Walt Whitman, ‘Specimen Days’ is a genre-bending, haunting ode to life itself – a work of surpassing power and beauty by one of the most original and daring writers at work today.