Oxygen: Shortlisted for the Booker Prize

'ANDREW MILLER'S WRITING IS A SOURCE OF WONDER AND DELIGHT' Hilary Mantel 'ONE OF OUR MOST SKILFUL CHRONICLERS OF THE HUMAN HEART AND MIND' Sunday Times Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel Award 'Beautiful' The Times 'Superbly realised' Sunday Telegraph 'Breathtaking' Irish Times The third novel from the critically acclaimed author of Pure - a deeply moving exploration of courage, love and liberation in the modern age In the summer of 1997, four people reach a turning point: Alice Valentine, who lies gravely ill in her West Country home; her two sons, one still searching for a sense of direction, the other fighting to keep his acting career and marriage afloat; and László Lázár, who leads a comfortable life in Paris yet is plagued by his memories of the 1956 Hungarian uprising. For each, the time has come to assess what matters in life, and all will be forced to take part in an act of liberation - though not necessarily the one foreseen. PRAISE FOR ANDREW MILLER 'Unique, visionary, a master at unmasking humanity' Sarah Hall 'A writer of very rare and outstanding gifts' Independent on Sunday 'A highly intelligent writer, both exciting and contemplative' The Times 'A wonderful storyteller' Spectator

About the Author :
Andrew Miller's first novel, Ingenious Pain, was published by Sceptre in 1997. 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 has been followed by Casanova, Oxygen, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award in 2001, The Optimists, One Morning Like a Bird, Pure, which won the Costa Book of the Year Award in 2011, The Crossing, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free, The Slowworm's Song and The Land in Winter, which won the Winston Graham Historical Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2025. Andrew Miller's novels have been published in translation in twenty countries. Born in Bristol in 1960, he currently lives in Somerset.

Review :
His prose is perfectly balanced, both beautiful and exact Elegantly written . . . an intelligent and stylish read Thoughtful, complex and satisfying . . . a deeply pleasurable read A beautifully written novel, which extols the power of love . . . it grabs your attention to the last page A writer of astonishing gifts who peels his characters back to the quick with a language that never misses a note . . . his complex characters are unravelled with a depth and elegance that is breathtaking A writer of verve and talent . . . Miller's prose is fluent, lucid and at times radiant Miller's use of imagery is always unexpected, sometimes astonishing . . . impossible to put down Miller is a writer of such astonishing prose that wherever he takes his characters, they speak a rare emotional truth Highly accomplished . . . breathe in and enjoy He has a surgical disdain for sentimentality and cliche, and his startling sentences, both beautiful and distressing, can lodge themselves in your brain At times, reading this disparate, exact novel, you have the suspicion that Andrew Miller's writing might be capable of anything. It is particularly adept, however, at inhabiting neutered, almost insulated lives. In previous books he has quietly conjured other, odd worlds and made them seem like his own . . . Here the places his imagination visits are no less strange and no less directly realised, and the preoccupation with emotional vacuums persists Powerful and moving Complex and elegantly constructed . . . an admirably restrained piece of writing, tender, funny, witty, profound Poignant, probing, brainy fiction, animated by an intense and complex narrative drive, grounded in a vivid sense of place and character, and enlivened by a sly, stoical wit that keeps cropping up where you least expect it Lovely, striking, strange, evocative . . . exquisite Exquisitely detailed . . . a real talent An exhilarating journey through personal histories and a knowing glimpse at the ways we hold ourselves responsible for saving the people we love Four intersecting lives - which take the reader to Los Angeles, Paris, Budapest, and a deathbed in rural England - are portrayed with uncommon wisdom