A01=Jill Dawson
Author_Jill Dawson
bailey’s women’s prize
book of the year
Category=FBA
compelling
costa novel winner
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
Insightful
literary fiction
longlist
man booker prize
modern classics
Moving
Original
powerful
Pulitzer prize
shortlist
thought-provoking
Product details
- ISBN 9780340822975
- Weight: 220g
- Dimensions: 128 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 05 Jul 2004
- Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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In 18th-century France, a child is captured in the forests near Aveyron where he seems to have been living wild for seven years. Now 12 years old, the Wild Boy is put on public display as a freak, and finally handed over to the ambitious, emotionally repressed Doctor Itard, who is charged with educating the boy, whom he names Victor, and trying to discover the secrets of his strange, secret life. But Victor soon becomes a pawn in the raging debate about nature vs nurture, and Itard's attempts to civilise him bear little fruit. Instead, Victor seems drawn to Mme Guerin, his motherly guardian - and to her vivacious daughter, Julie, who is herself falling for Itard as he struggles to understand both Victor and his own confused emotions. Giving a vivid sense of the Revolutionary period, the novel brings to life through the stories of three fascinating characters a mysterious case that resonates in the modern day preoccupation with autism.
Jill Dawson's novels include Fred & Edie, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, Watch Me Disappear, which was longlisted for the Orange Prize, and The Crime Writer, winner of the East Anglian Book of the Year. An award-winning poet, she has also edited several poetry and short story anthologies.
She has held many fellowships, including the Creative Writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia. In 2008 she founded a mentoring scheme for new writers, Gold Dust, and in 2020 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in the Cambridgeshire Fens.
