Sarah Perry's new novel, Melmoth, opens with an imperative: "Look!" The object of our gazes is Helen Franklin, 42, "small, insignificant, having about her an air ... of self-punishment, of self-hatred ...

When news breaks, you need to understand what actually matters. At Vox, our mission is to help you make sense of the world — and that work has never been more vital. But we can’t do it on our own. We ...

Twenty years ago Helen Franklin did something she cannot forgive herself for, and she has spent every day since barricading herself against its memory. But her sheltered life is about to change. A ...

This is a very good, very enjoyable, very moving and very subtle novel, although whether or not it will stand the test of ages and become a classic is not, really, for me to judge. In part this is ...

Helen Franklin is post-40-ish, an English exile who's had a pretty humdrum time for the 20 years or so she's been in the cosmopolitan city of Prague where she translates sparkling prose, like the ...

Written by an eccentric Irish curate, Charles Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) is a bizarre gothic romance. "A novel", as the protagonist of Sarah Perry's latest work suggests, that "nobody reads" ...

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. “All my life I’ve wanted to write a great villain, but a woman,” Sarah Perry said recently, reflecting on the ...