Father Alberto and the Flying Girl

'Profound and strange and utterly original. A book about madness and miracles, faith and pain, human frailty and human kindness - you have to read it to believe it'

Rachel Seiffert, author of The Dark Room

'The thing that struck me about this book (aside from its pitch-perfect, super-consistent tone, and the sharpness of the writing line-by-line) was its relevance. It’s about care, compassion and kindness, in the face of an unforgiving world. The story is as strange as it is universal, as dark as it is joyous, as hilarious as it is heartfelt: it's a truly special book'

Christopher Wakling, author of What I Did

‘Father Alberto is hilarious, moving, and delightfully weird. A timeless portrait of humanity in its very real darkness, counterbalanced with a passionate sense of hope. I thought it was brilliant’

Jo Harkin, author of THE PRETENDER

'Boldly written, richly physical and brilliantly inventive, Father Alberto and the Flying Girl lets us inhabit a beautiful, cruel medieval world made resplendent with a memorable cast of strange and wondrous characters, both human and animal. A moving and spiritual debut novel. I look forward very much to what Timothy X Atack does next'

Oisín Fagan, author of NOBBER

'I've rarely read anything so vivid and empathetic, so gentle and yet utterly heartbreaking. It's historical fiction with a modern message, but not in a way that feels trite. It's religious but in a firmly human way. And it's about love, but there's no twee romance in sight'

Tabitha Stanmore, author of CUNNING FOLK

'I love historical fiction in which the route to the pre-modern – as a place, a time, and an earlier way of seeing and being – is furrowed through language. Father Alberto and the Flying Girl is one of these books. I was absorbed by every sight and sound on the page. Maybe not since Alan Garner or Peter Ackroyd has a word-dream of the past been conjured with such moving and brilliant magic'

Tom Benn, author of Oxblood

'Dark and strange and wonderful . . . A marvellous piece of world-building, a celebration of care and a condemnation of the blindness of organised religion'

Mark Haddon, author of LEAVING HOME