"I will grant here at the outset that the Doctor was not who he seemed, but this shall turn out to be of little import in the tale to come. He is, as am I, but a charge in a wire. We were conductors for another force, vassals to a vessel. This vessel I cannot speak of for some pages however central it will become, but I gallop ahead of myself. . . . I believe it is important that you see how I came to meet the good Doctor, and for you to meet us for who we were. Perhaps you will marvel, as have I, at how chance encounters can be charged with the power to alter the course of one’s life, or even history."
In the late-eighteenth century, the conjurer and amateur scientist Gustavus Katterfelto has made a name for himself travelling across the English countryside with a bag of tricks. For audiences, his astonishing stunts are pure magic. For Katterfelto, each one is carefully engineered and executed with the help of his colleague, confidante and amanuensis, and our narrator, Roger Gossage.
Yet one day in their travels, the two men come across a mystifying object beyond their ken: a metal horn that emits a disembodied woman’s voice. She calls herself Siri of Toronto, and claims to speak from a place plagued by climate catastrophe and social unrest. As they begin to use the horn in their magic shows, Gossage and Katterfelto must work to understand the origin and intent of Siri’s call—a quest that will put them up against the limits of reason and test Roger’s allegiance to the man he calls his friend.
Endlessly inventive, richly imagined, and entirely its own, The Trial of Katterfelto is a consciousness-expanding novel that writes directly into the most urgent questions we face as a species: who we are, what we have done, and what we might do from here.
MICHAEL REDHILL is the author of the novels Martin Sloane, shortlisted for the Giller Prize and winner of the Books in Canada First Novel Award, Consolation, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize; and most recently, Bellevue Square, winner of the 2017 Giller Prize. He has written a novel for young adults, six collections of poetry, and four plays, including the internationally celebrated Goodness. He has also written a series of crime novels under the name Inger Ash Wolfe, one of which, The Calling, was made into a movie with Susan Sarandon and Donald Sutherland. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.
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