“He had made a vow, a private promise to the world in the long dark watches of the night, that if he did survive then in the great afterward he would always try to be kind, to live a good, quiet life. Like Candide, he would cultivate his garden. quietly. And that would be his redemption. Even if he could add only a feather to the balance it would be some kind of repayment for being spared. When it was all over and the reckoning fell due, it may be that he would be in need of that feather.”

English novelist, playwright and short story writer

Kate Atkinson is an English novelist, playwright and short story writer. She is known for fiction that ranges across historical, detective and family novels, and for blending postmodern and magical realist elements into her work. Her debut novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the Whitbread Book Award in 1995. She later won the Costa Book Award for Novel for Life After Life in 2013 and A God in Ruins in 2015. Atkinson is also known for the Jackson Brodie detective novels, which were adapted for BBC One as Case Histories.