The Library of Traumatic Memory
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published:12th Mar '26
Should be back in stock very soon

The first literary sci-fi novel from award-winning author, director and screenwriter Neil Jordan.
The first literary science fiction novel from Neil Jordan, visionary director of The Company of Wolves and Interview with the Vampire
In a windswept corner of a forgotten peninsula, love and loss echo through the halls of a mansion built on secrets. Here memory is currency of the future, and the past refuses to stay buried.
In the year 2084, Christian Cartwright, a quiet librarian at the enigmatic Huxley Institute, spends his days archiving the world’s most painful memories in the Library of Traumatic Memory.
But when his lover Isolde dies in a mysterious car crash, Christian secretly resurrects her as a digital consciousness — an act of grief, obsession, and defiance.
As Christian navigates a world where memories can be edited, dreams harvested, and the dead made to speak, he uncovers a deeper conspiracy buried in the Institute’s foundations — one that stretches back centuries to his 18th-century ancestor Montagu Cartwright, the architect of the Huxley Mansion.
Montagu’s obsidian mirror and copper model may hold the key to a reality where architecture shapes fate and time loops back on itself.
Blending gothic mystery, speculative science, and philosophical depth, The Library of Traumatic Memory is a haunting meditation on love, loss, and the ethics of memory.
As the past and future collide, Christian must decide what it means to remember — and what it costs to forget.
Lyrically written, brimming with ideas, sometimes sinister and often humorous, it's an enchanting read * The Guardian *
Not the work of a literary author merely holidaying in the speculative, as sometimes happens, but, by contrast, that of a writer who understands genre and has chosen an appropriate palette for a specific set of contemporary anxieties * Irish Times *
In Alan Garner territory: an intense and complex story where the keening echoes of the past resonate down the centuries * Daily Mail *
Heartbreaking and hilarious... Angela Carter meets de Selby meets James Stephens meets Bram Stoker meets Alice coming back through the mirror * Paula Meehan, for RTE *
As head-scratching as all this is, Jordan’s creative talents allow him to entertainingly carry it off and pose some interesting questions along that way * Sunday Independent (Ireland) *
A smart book but it wears that intelligence very lightly, always aiming for the reader's heart as much as the head * The Big Issue *
Jordan is as fearless an author as he’s visionary in the director’s chair, and this feels like a future cult classic * Vale 50 Plus *
ISBN: 9781035923298
Dimensions: 234mm x 154mm x 34mm
Weight: 513g
336 pages