The Crimson petal and the white

A gripping tale of Victorian England -from whores to high society-by a twenty-first-century Charles Dickens At the heart of this panoramic, multidimensional narrative is the compelling struggle of a young woman to lift her body and soul out of the gutter. Michel Faber leads us back to 1870's London, where Sugar, a nineteen-year-old whore in the brothel of the terrifying Mrs. Castaway, yearns for escape into a better life. Her ascent through the strata of Victorian society offers us intimacy with a host of lovable, maddening, unforgettable characters.

They begin with William Rackham, an egotistical perfume magnate whose ambition is fueled by his lust for Sugar, and whose patronage of her brings her into proximity to his extended family and milieu: his unhinged, child-like wife, Agnes; his mysteriously hidden-away daughter, Sophie; and his pious brother Henry, foiled in his devotional calling by a persistently less-than-chaste love for the Widow Fox, whose efforts on behalf of The Rescue Society lead Henry into ever-more disturbing confrontations with flesh. All this is overseen by assorted preening socialites, drunken journalists, untrustworthy servants, vile guttersnipes, and whores of all stripes and persuasions.

Twenty years in its conception, research, and writing, The Crimson Petal and the White is a singular literary achievement-a gripping, intoxicating, deeply satisfying Victorian novel written with an immediacy, compassion, and insight that give it a timeless and universal appeal.

Michel Faber is the author of the novel

Under the Skin and Some Rain Must Fall, a collection of short stories. His work has been published in twenty-one countries and has received several international literary awards.

Born in Holland, raised in Australia, he now lives in the Scottish Highlands.

Praise for

The Crimson Petal and the White

"Readers have been watching for another knockdown, breakout book on the order of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections.

It's here. Like John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman, with which it deserves to stand, The Crimson Petal and the White is a postmodern take on the Victorian novel… Words can say things even bodies can't. And that's why a book like this is even better than sex." -Time "Captivating… astonishing… We find ourselves inside the heroine's head, led there by a rhetoric so skilled and daring that we hardly know it's operating… This sympathy is neither sentimental nor observed… We find feelings and states of being we didn't know we possessed." -The New York Times Book Review

To Eva, with love and thanks

The girls that are wanted are good girls Good from the heart to the lips Pure as the lily is white and pure From its heart to its sweet leaf tips.

The girls that are wanted are girls with hearts They are wanted for mothers and wives Wanted to cradle in loving arms The strongest and frailest lives.

The clever, the witty, the brilliant girl There are few who can understand But, oh! For the wise, loving home girls There's a constant, steady demand. from "The Girls that are Wanted" J.

H. Gray, can. 1880