A Booker Prize nominee in 2024, Sarah Perry talks to author and journalist Alex Preston about Enlightenment, a story of love and astronomy told over the course of 20 years through the lives of two improbable best friends. A gem.

Sarah Perry is the bestselling author of Melmoth, The Essex Serpent and After Me Comes the Flood, and the non-fiction Essex Girls. She is a winner of the Waterstones Book of the Year Award and the British Book of the Year Award and has been nominated for major literary prizes including the Booker Prize, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Folio Prize and the Costa Novel Award.

Alex Preston writes for the Observer and the Guardian. His books include In Love and War; As Kingfishers Catch Fire; and Winchelsea. Alex lives in Kent.