About the book
A child will be born who will change everything.
When a young woman named Talissa answers an advert to carry a child, she cannot begin to imagine the consequences.
A child will be born who will change everything.
When a young woman named Talissa answers an advert to carry a child, she cannot begin to imagine the consequences.
A beautifully written novel. On the one hand you have love, kindness, responsibility; on the other monstrous arrogance and indifference to consequences
A stunning novel: profoundly moving, deeply unsettling, thought-provoking and prescient but also a wonderful and life-affirming love story too.
Once I had started I literally could not stop. It really is his greatest novel yet, and of course beautifully written in that wonderful, understated style.
Faulks is one of the most original and compelling writers in the world. This enthralling novel is right up there among his very finest work.
A completely fascinating and extraordinary novel. A profound and moving examination of our complex human nature.
This is a genuinely thought-provoking piece of fiction. You could devour it in a day and be wholly transported into the near future, then set it back down, dazed but enlightened, in the present day where you will see the world anew in all its wonders and frailties
This elegant near-future novel about a daring scientific experiment explores the evolution of consciousness… Faulks is an enviably graceful and economical writer. The early chapters of the book rip along with clarity and elegance. He conjures up the various worlds, brings the central characters vividly to life and keeps the story moving intriguingly forward
…a high-concept page-turner… Pitched somewhere between Michael Crichton and Ian McEwan, it’s a timely meditation on the whims of rich tycoon
Faulks takes his readers on an engaging and thought-provoking journey into the realm of “what if?”… The Seventh Son straddles two worlds, encompassing the distant past as well as the future. In so doing, Faulks asks difficult questions about who and what we are, and whether we could ever justifiably alter our genes to remove the worst of our defects.
Thought-provoking and chilling
Fabulously compelling… a provocative, poignant and disturbing examination of what it is to be human… Who says a novel of ideas can’t be as thrilling as a holiday beach read? The Birdsong author’s novels invariably examine big, bold ideas yet are beautifully told with a gossamer light touch. The Seventh Son is no exception
A resonant hint of Frankenstein’s wretched monster about Seth who, functional, capable and literate as he is, stands at the book’s emotional centre, desperate for a companionship he can never find
Compelling from start to finish, and in examining what is necessary to make us human, and in showing the base, salacious behaviour of some of the genetically lucky, it subverts prejudices of superiority
Told with the pace of a thriller
This deft exploration of human genetics is strange, unsettling and one of the novelist’s best… Perhaps the reason people keep coming back to Faulks is his ability to make novels do many things at once. In The Seventh Son he teaches us an enormous amount about the history and science of genetics, tears apart puffed-up plutocrats and their hobby horses, and offers a complex consideration of how and why mental illnesses develop. But this is also a novel in which the reader cares deeply about the characters, feeling the emotional bonds between them very acutely. The Seventh Son is another strange and unsettling book from one of our most popular novelists; it’s also one of his best
The Seventh Son, a brainy slab of speculative fiction, poses unsettling questions about the history of evolution, the ethics of genetics and the nature of human consciousness, while educating the reader in all they might wish to know about the miraculous – and extremely dangerous – possibilities of science
Behind the doors of the Parn Institute, a billionaire entrepreneur plans to stretch the boundaries of ethics as never before. Through a series of IVF treatments, one they hope no one ever discovers, they set in motion an experiment that is set to upend the human race as we know it.
Seth, a baby, is delivered to hopeful parents Mary and Alaric, but when his differences start to mark him out from his peers, he begins to attract unwanted attention.
The Seventh Son is a spectacular examination of what it is to be human. Sweeping between New York, London, and the Scottish Highlands, this is an extraordinary novel about unrequited love and unearned power. It asks the question: just because you can do something, does it mean you should?
