Praise for Alix Nathan: The best kind of historical fiction ... She is an original, with a virtuoso touch.

(Hilary Mantel)A powerful and unsettling novel, both fascinating and infinitely strange (Andrew Taylor)Unusual, gripping and emotionally complex - I loved this book. (Sally Magnusson, author of The Sealwoman's Gift)This is an extraordinary, quite brilliant book (C. J. Sansom)

'This is an extraordinary, quite brilliant book' - C. J. Sansom What kind of person keeps a man underground for seven years?And who would agree to be part of such an experiment?

Herbert Powyss lives on a small estate in the Welsh Marches, with enough time and income to pursue a gentleman's fashionable cultivation of exotic plants and trees. But he longs to make his mark in the field of science - something consequential enough to present to the Royal Society in London.

He hits on a radical experiment in isolation: for seven years a subject will inhabit three rooms in the cellar of the manor house, fitted out with books, paintings and even a chamber organ. Meals will arrive thrice daily via a dumbwaiter. The solitude will be totally unrelieved by any social contact; the subject will keep a diary of his daily thoughts and actions. The pay? Fifty pounds per annum, for life.

Only one man is desperate enough to apply for the job: John Warlow, a semi-literate labourer with a wife and six children to provide for. The experiment, a classic Enlightenment exercise gone more than a little mad, will have unforeseen consequences for all included. In this seductive tale of self-delusion and obsession, Alix Nathan has created an utterly transporting historical novel which is both elegant and unforgettably sinister.