{"product_id":"the-premonitions-bureau-a-sunday-times-bestseller","title":"The Premonitions Bureau: A Sunday Times bestseller","description":"Review\n\nA stunning piece of work. Brimming with mystery and suffused with haunting atmosphere, The Premonitions Bureau is the tale of a team of midcentury investigators who set out to answer some of life's most imponderable questions. With calm rationality and a keen sense of pacing, Sam Knight relates the extraordinary story of this initiative to study those among us who appear to be able to predict the future -- and in particular, to predict disaster. An enveloping, unsettling book, gorgeously written and profound. -- Patrick Radden Keefe, bestselling author of SAY NOTHING and EMPIRE OF PAIN\n\nAn extraordinary story. -- Emma Brockes ― Guardian\n\nA propulsive, atmospheric story, featuring a cast of strange characters, a series of unnerving coincidences and several apparently foretold disasters . . . [that] also touches on rich and fascinating themes. ― New Statesman\n\nMagnificent . . . I have a feeling - you might even call it a premonition - that a lot of people will really enjoy it. ― Daily Mail\n\nA fluent and enticing book, skilfully navigating the tricky and marginal subject of the paranormal; it is beautifully ordered, humane, capacious. -- Hilary Mantel\n\nA terrifically insightful book, unusual in all its aspects. Readers will love it for its brilliant sense of storytelling and its fierce interest in character. I was knocked out by the precision and drama of it all, by the book's comprehension of our deepest dreads and our relentless bid to control them. -- Andrew O'Hagan\n\nThe Premonitions Bureau is an eerie and amazing account of coincidence and fate, and the impossibility of knowing the difference. I loved this fascinating book. -- Emma Cline, bestselling author of THE GIRLS: A NOVEL\n\nTake the addictive storytelling of Patrick Radden Keefe and mix it with the stranger-than-fiction stuff of a Jon Ronson podcast, and you'll get Sam Knight's must-read first book ... A spooky, gripping read about the difference between fate and coincidence. ― Evening Standard\n\nThe Premonitions Bureau is a remarkable book, telling the story of a remarkable man - John Barker - through a unique blend of history, biography, and the modern science of how the brain's predictions shape our worlds and control our bodies. Occasionally disconcerting, completely compelling and beautifully written - Sam Knight will take you an unforgettable journey into a history of predicting the future. -- Anil Seth\n\nWonderful . . . fascinating characters, stories and ideas -- Mark Haddon\n\nEnthralling: a work of inspired, tireless and deeply compassionate curiosity. -- Helen Garner\n\n[Knight] combines a flair for American narrative non-fiction in the tradition of David Grann, Janet Malcolm and Joan Didion, with an absurdist lens on British life . . . his gin-clear prose . . . seems to have the freedom of fiction. ― The Times\n\nIt is a story both elegant and eccentric, cleanly capturing that brief moment in the 1960s when extrasensory perception verged on mainstream acceptance. It is also quietly terrifying, a reminder that even those who can see the future have no hope of getting out of its way. ― New York Times\n\nEndlessly readable. . . richly researched . . . it tells a tantalising tale of the unlikely interplay between the press, psychiatry and the paranormal in Britain during the late 1960s. His flair for synthesis and compression keeps the reader riveted. ― Guardian\n\nNew Yorker writer Knight tells this fascinating story with his typically enjoyable combination of fastidious research and an ear for the absurd ― Esquire, The Best Books of 2022\n\nProduct Description\n\n**A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**\n** Chosen as a Book of the Year in the Times, Observer, Telegraph, Irish Times, Stylist and iPaper **\n\n'A stunning piece of work' Patrick Radden Keefe\n'Beautifully ordered, humane, capacious' Hilary Mantel\n'An eerie and amazing account of coincidence and fate' Emma Cline\n'Completely compelling and beautifully written' Anil Seth\n\nThe story of a strange experiment - a journey into ","brand":"Faber \u0026 Faber","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40595643465813,"sku":"9780571357567N","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2481\/5790\/files\/218d650c-70bf-4fec-a705-a04dcd665c12.jpg?v=1682420356","url":"https:\/\/smeikalbooks.co.uk\/products\/the-premonitions-bureau-a-sunday-times-bestseller","provider":"smeikalbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}