The Wonder

Now a major Netflix film starring Florence Pugh

Emma Donoghue author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Pan Macmillan

Published:10th Nov '22

Should be back in stock very soon

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 bestselling 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 is inspired by numerous European and North American cases of 'fasting girls' between the sixteenth century and the twentieth. A psychological thriller about a child's murder threatening to happen in slow motion before our eyes.

'Fans of Emma Donoghue's first novel Room will not be disappointed with The Wonder' – Red Magazine

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

Media tie-in