Books of the Year for Christmas

"Annabel Lyon won prizes in her native Canada for her note-perfect historical novel The Golden Mean (Atlantic, £14.99), but here [in the UK] it has not had the attention it deserves. It tells the story of Aristotle and the young Alexander; her interpretation of their relationship and their world is luminous and deeply intelligent." --Hilary Mantel

To read the full article in The Telegraph, with more gift suggestions from Mantel, Colm Toibin, Simon Schama, Lydia Davis and others, please click here.

Praise from Hilary Mantel

"This quietly ambitious and beautifully achieved novel is one of the most convincing historical novels I have ever read. Lyon makes her reader avid for every detail of this strange world, whether domestic or medical or military, and she has steeped herself in the thinking of the time. She makes her characters entirely solid and real, while respecting their otherness, the distance between us. That is what characterised Mary Renault’s novels, and I think that she would have deeply admired this book. [Lyon’s] judgment is sound and true, and the reader trusts her voice from the first paragraph."

--Hilary Mantel, author of the Man Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall

Times Profile

"On the day that I am to interview Lyon, an e-mail slips into my inbox from none other than the Booker prizewinner Hilary Mantel. It is full of praise for The Golden Mean, calling it a “quietly ambitious and beautifully achieved novel” that is “one of the most convincing historical novels I have ever read”."

To read Jake Wallis Simons' entire article for The Times, please click here.