The Incarnations

‘A thrilling journey through a thousand years of obsession and betrayal, this is the most extraordinary work of imagination you’ll read all year’. (Adam Johnson, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2013). ‘An extraordinary novel. Erudite, intriguing and compulsively readable, Susan Barker, a born story-teller, has written one of the most remarkable novels of recent years’. (John Boyne). ‘A brilliant, mind-expanding, and wildly original novel’. (Chris Cleave). ‘What a ferociously talented writer Susan Barker is. The Incarnations is a hallucinatory ride. Highly recommend’. (Anna Hope, author of Wake).

Beijing, 2008, the Olympics are coming, but as taxi driver Wang circles the city’s congested streets, he feels barely alive. His daily grind is suddenly interrupted when he finds a letter in the sunshade of his cab. Someone is watching him. Someone who claims to be his soulmate and to have known him for over a thousand years. Other letters follow, taking Wang back in time: to a spirit-bride in the Tang Dynasty; to young slaves during the Mongol invasion; to concubines plotting to kill the emperor; to a kidnapping in the Opium War; and to Red Guards during the Cultural revolution. And with each letter, Wang feels the watcher in the shadows growing closer …Sweeping between China past and present, The Incarnations illuminates the cyclical nature of history, and shows how man is condemned to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.