Hawksmoor (novel)
First edition cover
|
|
| Author | Peter Ackroyd |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Hamish Hamilton |
|
Publication date
|
September 1985 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 12500258 |
Hawksmoor is a 1985 novel by the English writer Peter Ackroyd. It won Best Novel at the 1985 Whitbread Awards and the Guardian Fiction Prize. It tells the parallel stories of Nicholas Dyer, who builds seven churches in 18th-century London for which he needs human sacrifices, and Nicholas Hawksmoor, detective in the 1980s, who investigates murders committed in the same churches.Hawksmoor has been praised as Peter Ackroyd's best novel up to now and an example of postmodernism.
Set in the early 18th century, architect Nicholas Dyer is progressing work on several churches in London's East End. He is, however, involved in Satanic practices (something inculcated in him as an orphan), a fact which he must keep secret from all his associates, including his supervisor Sir Christopher Wren. This is all the more challenging since he indulges in human sacrifice as part of the construction of the buildings. Dyer's simmering contempt for Wren is brought closest to the surface in discussions they have concerning rationalism versus Dyer's own carefully disguised brand of mysticism.
In the 20th century, DCS Nicholas Hawksmoor is called in to investigate a bizarre series of murders by strangulation that have occurred in and around the churches designed by Dyer. The murders are all the more mystifying since the murderer appeared to have left no identifying traces, not even fingerprints on the victims' necks.
However the area is stalked by mysterious shadows, and it becomes clear that not only the weight of the investigation, but unseen forces from the past come to bear on Hawksmoor in a powerful, destructive manner.
Peter Ackroyd stressed the fact that Hawksmoor is not a historical novel in the strict sense of the word: "I have employed many sources in the preparation of Hawksmoor, but this version of history is my own invention." The novel "radically subverts the conventions of historical fiction" due to its idiosyncratic time structure.
...
Wikipedia