The Anatomist’s Dream

"Chop off my head and hawk it to the highest bidder. I'm the Anatomist's Dream, did you know? That's what they call me." In a small salt-mining town, Philbert is born with a taupe, a disfiguring inflammation of the skull. Abandoned by both parents and with only a pet pig for company, he eventually finds refuge and companionship in a travelling carnival, Maulwerf's Fair of Wonders, as it makes its annual migration across Germany bringing entertainment to a people beset by famine, repression and revolutionary ferment. Philbert soon finds a caring family in Hermann the Fish Man, Lita, the Dancing Dwarf, Frau Fettleheim, the Fattest Woman in the World and an assortment of freak show artists, magicians and entertainers. But then Philbert meets Kwert, Tospirologist and Teller of Signs, and when he persuades the boy to undergo examination by the renowned physician and craniometrist, Dr Ullendorf, both Kwert and Philbert embark on an altogether darker and more perilous journey--Page 2 of jacket.

Prize history

• Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction

  2016

  Longlist