When two nineteenth-century Oxford students — Victor Frankenstein, a serious researcher, and the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley — form an unlikely friendship, the result is a tour de force that could only come from one of the world’s most accomplished and prolific authors.
Penned in period-perfect prose, this haunting and atmospheric novel is sure to become a classic of the twenty-first century.
Our Reader’s Guide makes this a perfect pick for book groups.
“A brilliant riff on ideas that have informed literary, horror and science fiction for nearly two centuries…. Ackroyd laces his narrative intelligently with the Romantic ideals of Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, and deftly interweaves Victor’s fictional travails with events of the well-known 1816 meeting between the poets that inspired Mary to draft her landmark story.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review