Nights at the Circus

In 1899 the American journalist Jack Walser interviews Fevvers, a winged aerialiste who may be a woman or a lark, then follows her from a London dressing room into a travelling circus bound for St Petersburg and Siberia. Fevvers's own account of a childhood in a brothel, a museum of women monsters, and music-hall fame mixes with Walser's attempt to stay a sceptic. Clowns, a tiger-taming princess, and a grand duke's collection complicate the tour. The novel is a picaresque fantasy about performance and belief, not a documentary of the circus trade.

Bound in mid-blue cloth printed with an image in black and gilt. Gold slipcase.