Sweet Thames

In the summer of 1849, cholera threatens the city and the people of London. The authorities send millions of gallons of sewage cascading into the Thames - for many Londoners the only source of drinking water. Joshua Jeavons, a young and idealistic engineer, embarks on an obsessive quest to find the cause of the epidemic. As he labours in a fog of incomprehension, his domestic life is troubled by the baffling coldness of his beautiful bride, Isobella. But when she suddenly disappears, his desperate search for her takes him to a netherworld of slum-dwellers, pickpockets and scavengers of subterranean London.

Matthew Kneale is the author of seven novels and two works of non-fiction. His debut novel, Whore Banquets, won the Somerset Maugham Award, Sweet Thames won John Llewellyn Rhys, and English Passengers, shortlisted for the Man Booker and Miles Franklin, won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award in 2000. His latest non-fiction book, Rome: A History in Seven Sackings, was a Waterstones Book of the Month. For the last fifteen years he has lived in Rome with his wife and two children.