Hachette India

The Curator

Owen King

Half fairy tale and half historical account of a revolution that never was, Owen King's The Curator is full of sly humor, sensuality, and strangeness - Holly Black From Sunday Times bestselling author Owen King comes a Dickensian fantasy of illusion and charm where cats are revered as religious figures, thieves are noble, scholars are revolutionaries, and conjurers the most wonderful criminals. At first glance, the world has not changed: the trams on the boulevards, the grand hotels, the cafes abuzz with conversation. The street kids still play on the two great bridges that divide the city, and the smart set still venture down to the Morgue Ship for an evening's entertainment. Yet it only takes a spark to ignite a revolution. For young Dora, a maid at the university, the moment brings liberation. She finds herself walking out with one of the student radicals, Robert, free to investigate what her brother Ambrose may have seen at the Institute for Psykical Research before he died. But it is another establishment that Dora is given to look after, The Museum of the Worker. This strange, forgotten edifice is occupied by waxwork tableaux of miners, nurses, shopkeepers and other disturbingly lifelike figures. As the revolution and counter-revolution outside unleash forces of love, betrayal, magic and terrifying darkness, Dora's search for the truth behind a mystery that she has long concealed will unravel a monstrous conspiracy and bring her to the very edge of worlds. In The Curator, Owen King has created an extraordinary time and place - historical, fantastical, yet compellingly real, and a heroine who is courageous, curious and utterly memorable. 'The Curator feels a little like Owen King somehow brought a curiosity cabinet to life. There are terrors here, but also marvels and delights, and a set of the most interesting characters I've met in some time. Put The Curator on the same shelf as other classics of the uncanny and uncategorisable, like Susanna Clarke's Piranesi and Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast. I loved it' - Kelly Link 'Owen King's The Curator is a rich read. Language, characters, and a fascinating world combine to create an intensely satisfying experience' - Charlaine Harris

Owen King

Owen King was born in Bangor, Maine, which in the nineteenth century was arguably the lumber capital of the world, but which today is better known as the home of the easternmost major airport in the United States, the place where trans-Atlantic flights most often make emergency landings to kick off drunken and/or unruly passengers. Bangor is also cold most of the year, light for a only a few hours a day in the winter, and abutted to the north by an almost solid wall of pine trees stretching all the way to Canada. That said, Bangor - and the rest of Maine - went for Gore in 2000, and Kerry in 2004. This is an example, says Owen King, of the Yankee sensibility that defines and informs his work: stoically contrary, depressed, and deeply, deeply weird.
A graduate of Bangor Public High School, King went on to attend Vassar College in upstate New York, where he received a B.A. in English, and then to Columbia University, where he received an M.F.A. in fiction writing. His fiction and non-fiction has appeared in publications such as the Bellingham Review, Book Magazine, the Boston Globe, and Topic Magazine. He has been nominated for a National Magazine Award and is a recipient of the John Gardner Memorial Prize for Fiction.
King is also a screenwriter, with a script currently under option with Working Title Productions.
He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his partner, the novelist Kelly Braffet (Fabulous Things), and some cats. We're All in This Together is his first published book.

The Curator

Owen King

Owen King

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