> Skip to content
Play sample
  • Published: 3 September 2024
  • ISBN: 9781804942833
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $22.99

The Seventh Son




THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

'Genuinely thought-provoking’ THE TIMES

'Extraordinary' WILLIAM BOYD

‘Faulks is an enviably graceful and economical writer’ GUARDIAN

A CHILD WILL BE BORN WHO WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING

Tech billionaire Lukas Parn has an ambitious plan. Behind the doors of the IVF clinic in his London institute, a daring switch is made. Young academic Talissa Adam believes she is simply carrying a child for a grateful family, but the baby inside her is different from any living human. The boy, Seth, grows up unaware, though his parents not that he’s different: he can’t make plans, is unaware of danger and seems to have at least one extra sense. But as Seth becomes a man, the truth about him is revealed and the world starts to hunt him down.

‘ [An] unsettling book from one of our most popular novelists; it’s also one of his best’ FINANCIAL TIMES

‘His greatest novel yet' ANTONY BEEVOR

'Profoundly moving . . . a wonderful and life-affirming love story' JAMES HOLLAND

'Original and enthralling' PETER JAMES

  • Published: 3 September 2024
  • ISBN: 9781804942833
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

Sebastian Faulks

Sebastian Faulks was born in April 1953. Before becoming a full-time writer in 1991, he worked as a journalist. Sebastian Faulks’s books include A Possible Life, Human Traces, On Green Dolphin Street, Engleby, Birdsong, A Week in December and Where My Heart Used to Beat.

Also by Sebastian Faulks

See all

Praise for The Seventh Son

A stunning novel: profoundly moving, deeply unsettling, thought-provoking and prescient but also a wonderful and life-affirming love story too

James Holland

Once I had started I literally could not stop. It really is his greatest novel yet, and of course beautifully written in that wonderful, understated style

Antony Beevor

Faulks is one of the most original and compelling writers in the world. This enthralling novel is right up there among his very finest work

Peter James

A completely fascinating and extraordinary novel. A profound and moving examination of our complex human nature

William Boyd

This is a genuinely thought-provoking piece of fiction. You could devour it in a day and be wholly transported into the near future, then set it back down, dazed but enlightened, in the present day where you will see the world anew in all its wonders and frailties

The Times

A beautifully written novel. On the one hand you have love, kindness, responsibility; on the other monstrous arrogance and indifference to consequences

The Scotsman

Brilliant, original and unputdownable. An absolute cracker

Peter Frankopan

Brilliant

Matthew Parker

This elegant near-future novel about a daring scientific experiment explores the evolution of consciousness… Faulks is an enviably graceful and economical writer. The early chapters of the book rip along with clarity and elegance. He conjures up the various worlds, brings the central characters vividly to life and keeps the story moving intriguingly forward

Guardian

A high-concept page-turner… Pitched somewhere between Michael Crichton and Ian McEwan, it’s a timely meditation on the whims of rich tycoon

Mail on Sunday

Engaging and thought-provokingThe Seventh Son straddles two worlds, encompassing the distant past as well as the future. In so doing, Faulks asks difficult questions about who and what we are, and whether we could ever justifiably alter our genes to remove the worst of our defects

Herald

Thought-provoking and chilling

I Paper

Fabulously compelling… a provocative, poignant and disturbing examination of what it is to be human… Who says a novel of ideas can’t be as thrilling as a holiday beach read? The Birdsong author’s novels invariably examine big, bold ideas yet are beautifully told with a gossamer light touch. The Seventh Son is no exception

Express

A resonant hint of Frankenstein’s wretched monster about Seth who, functional, capable and literate as he is, stands at the book’s emotional centre, desperate for a companionship he can never find

Daily Mail

Cutting-edge science and big, meaty ideas aside, it’s the minute details of everyday life and the bursting-from-the-page characters that make this thought-provoking novel come alive

Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Times

Sebastian Faulks has long been a novelist much occupied with ideas, especially scientific and medical ones, while contriving to marry this to a strong plot and credible characters . . . gripping, horribly persuasive and sad

Allan Massie, The Scotsman

Sebastian Faulks’s latest novel is a tender, haunting exploration of the power of technology to alter our understanding of what it means to be human.

Jane Shilling, Daily Mail
penguin pop image
penguin pop image