The Wonder

Now a major Netflix film starring Florence Pugh

Emma Donoghue author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Pan Macmillan

Published:10th Nov '22

£8.99

Available for immediate dispatch.

The Wonder cover

A tale of two strangers who transform each other's lives, a psychological thriller, and a story of love pitted against evil.

From the best-selling author of Room, a story of love pitted against evil and a major Netflix film starring Florence Pugh

A major film from the makers of Normal People and Room, starring Florence Pugh and streaming on Netflix.

'An old-school page turner with crackling intensity' Stephen King
'Powerful, compulsively readable' Irish Times


Eleven-year-old Anna O'Donnell stops eating, but remains miraculously alive and well. A nurse, sent to investigate whether she is a fraud, meets a journalist hungry for a story . . .

Set in the Irish Midlands in the 1850s, Emma Donoghue's The Wonder – inspired by numerous European and North American cases of 'fasting girls' between the sixteenth century and the twentieth – is a psychological thriller about a child's murder threatening to happen in slow motion before our eyes.

Emma Donoghue's writing is superb alchemy, changing innocence into horror and horror into tenderness -- Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife
Fascinating . . . Like The Turn of the Screw, the novel opens irresistibly, when a young woman with a troubled past gets an enigmatic posting in a remote place . . . Heartbreaking and transcendent and almost religious in itself -- Sarah Lyall * New York Times *
A fine, fact-based historical novel, an old-school page turner . . . Donoghue has written, with crackling intensity, about [spirituality's] power to destroy -- Stephen King * New York Times Book Review *
A riveting allegory about the trickle-down effect of trauma * Vogue *
Donoghue mines material that on the face of it appears intractably bleak and surfaces with a powerful, compulsively readable work of fiction * Irish Times *
Deliciously gothic * USA Today *
Heartbreaking and transcendent * New York Times *
Fans of Emma Donoghue's first novel Room will not be disappointed with The Wonder. . .a tale of claustrophobic suspense and the intense relationship between a woman and a child * Red Magazine *
Like [Room], The Wonder explores a dark, insular, and rigidly controlled environment . . . there is more to this mystery than superstitions and local dialect. * The Oprah Magazine *
Donoghue proves herself endlessly inventive . . . This is the kind of book that will keep you up at night and make you smarter -- Julie Buntin * Cosmopolitan *
Ingenious * Wall Street Journal *
Lib is a heroine the modern woman can admire * Time Magazine *

  • Short-listed for Bord Gáis Energy Eason Novel of the Year 2016 (UK)
  • Short-listed for Kerry Group Irish Novel Award 2017 (UK)
  • Long-listed for International Dublin Literary Award 2018 (UK)

ISBN: 9781529093001

Dimensions: 197mm x 131mm x 35mm

Weight: 260g

368 pages

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