Delphi

By Clare Pollard

A captivating debut novel about a classics professor immersed in research for a new book on a prophecy in the ancient world who confronts chilling questions about her own life just as the pandemic descends

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 208

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'I am sick of the future. Up to here with the future. I don't want anything to do with it; don't want it near me'

It is 2020 and in a time more turbulent than any of us could have ever imagined, a woman is attempting to write a book about prophecy in the ancient world.

Navigating the tightening grip of lockdown, a marriage in crisis, and a 10-year-old son who seems increasingly unreachable, she becomes fixated on our many forms of divination and prediction: on oracles, tarot cards and tea leaves and the questions we have always asked as we scroll and click and rage against our fates.

But in doing so she fails to notice the future creeping into the heart of her own home. For despite our best intentions - our sacrifices and our bargains with the gods - time, certainty and, sometimes, those we love, can still slip away ...

Heartbreakingly relatable and achingly funny, Delphi is both a snapshot and a time capsule, deftly capturing our pasts, our presents, and how we keep on going in a world that is ever more uncertain and absurd.

Read if you: know all your friends' rising sign by heart.