Pure

by Andrew MillerThe 2011 Costa-winner charts the progress in pre-revolutionary Paris of the young engineer Jean-Baptiste Baratte, who is given the thankless task of overseeing the destruction of the church of Les Innocents and the clearance of its cemetery. As well as telling a gripping story, the novel dramatises some major conflicts of the Enlightenment: between history and progress, remembering and forgetting. Miller superbly evokes the smells, sounds and sights of 18th-century Paris in lean prose that plunges you into the era without appearing to have to work too hard to get every period detail right.