Capital

Meepers, homeless and dishevelled, yet an enlightened and mystically knowing amateur archaeologist, seeks to understand the destruction of London in the Dark Ages, hoping to predict the capital’s future. Emery, a university historian, writes to his absent wife as the new term begins. He once rejected for publication a ‘crackpot’ paper by Meepers and he is alarmed to find he has appeared at his first lecture. Now Meepers seems to be following Emery everywhere he goes. In a dazzling mixture of contemporary life and period speech, London is illuminated through the voices of Neanderthal man, Saxon kings, anonymous invaders, the flea that spread the Black Death and the transsexual King Elizabeth. Maureen Duffy’s novel about a Londoner who listens to the voices of the capital’s past, present and potential future is an endlessly inventive narrative which moves back and forth in time to produce an unforgettable portrait of the city.