Timothy X Atack is a writer, composer, and sound designer. His work includes the eco sci-fi thriller Forest 404 for BBC Sounds (WGGB and ARIA awards for best audio drama 2020) stage play Heartworm (winner of the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2017) and The Morpeth Carol , The Stroma Sessions and Beethoven Can Hear You among other audio dramas for BBC Radio. He also wrote and directed the award-wining short film All My Dreams on VHS starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw and O-T Fagbenle. Tim is from a Yorkshire family, grew up in Rio De Janeiro and currently lives in Bristol, where he co-founded the production company Sleepdogs with director Tanuja Amarasuriya, and is a resident at Pervasive Media Studio, Watershed. In 2023-24 he''s a writer-on-attachment at National Theatre Studio, and in June 2025 his play Delay - a queer sci-fi heartbreaker for the stage - will be produced at Bristol Old Vic. Father Alberto and the Flying Girl is his first novel.

Autorentext
TIMOTHY X ATACK is a writer, composer and sound designer. His work includes the stage plays DELAY (Bristol Old Vic) and Heartworm (winner of the 2017 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting), and eco-thriller audio drama Forest 404 for BBC Sounds (winner of the 2020 WGGB and ARIA awards for best audio drama). Tim is from a Yorkshire family, grew up in Rio de Janeiro and currently lives in Bristol, where he co-founded the production company Sleepdogs with director Tanuja Amarasuriya. Father Alberto and the Flying Girl is his first novel.

Klappentext

'Dark and strange and wonderful' MARK HADDON, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

'Hilarious, moving, and delightfully weird' JO HARKIN, author of The Pretender

A bold, vivid and fiercely imaginative historical novel with an unforgettable narrator, exploring intolerance, kindness and what 'madness' really means.

In a remote medieval parish, under the rule of a ruthless Abbess, hapless new priest Alberto is charged with guarding those deemed mad - and therefore godless.

All 'insane' villagers are locked in the Abbey dungeons, released only for the riotous Feast of the Holy Fool. Alberto's thankless task is to gather them again when the Feast ends - but as he comes to know them, he begins to question whether these so-called fools need saving at all.

Only one always escapes him: the Flying Girl, a mysterious child who refuses to speak or be caught.

As Alberto's sympathy deepens into defiance the Abbess calls in the Inferrant Brethren: a brutal religious inquisition with whom Alberto has history... With pressure mounting, Alberto must decide where he stands. Protecting the vulnerable may cost him everything.