The Illumination

From best-selling and award-winning American author Kevin Brockmeier, a novel which completely reimagines the world…

In faraway wars, injured troops emit shards of light into the desert night. On motorways, car crashes are luminous explosions. Cancers now radiate through translucent human flesh. Arthritic joints glow. This is the beautiful world of The Illumination, a world where all pain is manifested by light.
In a hospital room, Carol Ann Page, a lonely data analyst, is recovering from surgery
her newly stitched wounds glittering. During the night, her convalescence is disturbed as a flash of light signals the death of a neighbouring patient, a woman whose journal of private love notes comes into Carol Ann s possession. In time, this journal will pass through the hands of five other characters
a photojournalist, a schoolchild, a missionary, a writer, and a homeless street vendor. Each of them will take their own rich sustenance from the book in a story which spans decades and continents, and inhabits a parallel world where hidden truths are revealed, all suffering beautiful and shared. The Illumination is a stunning visual spectacle. It is a novel whose emotional warmth, insight and sheer invention cannot fail to move you.