DENT & SCRATCH The Garden of Perfect Clarity

Wounded, betrayed, and alone, an English boy is thrown into an alien land after a perilous journey to the East. Finding a city of unexpected friends, mysterious manuscripts, and narrow escapes, he discovers that nothing is quite as it seems-neither Asia nor the West, neither the past nor the future, neither wisdom nor foolishness. Brutal revolutionaries wage war in once-quiet halls of learning; a mother and child are smashed and restored; an ancient rite, barely glimpsed, beckons and heals. The Garden of Perfect Clarity evokes the works of Borges, Dickens, and Vodolazkin as it contemplates time, transformation, memory, and repentance in the engrossing story of one man's search for himself.

PRAISE FOR THIS BOOK:

"Roy Peachey has accomplished what few writers have. He has provided a sophisticated, brilliantly crafted, redolent, and cerebral novel that unites East and West in a manner that renegotiates what it means to write an 'historical novel.' The writing is clear and compelling, at times surreal, and always evocative and lyrical. As an historian of China's long history of exchange with the West, I finished this novel with a new and illuminated way of viewing of the worlds I have studied for decades." -ANTHONY E. CLARK

"The Garden of Perfect Clarity is a work of genius, conceived and executed with the sure touch of an artistic master. Peachey has created an imaginative world deeply informed by the precise details of human history and culture, particularly as regards China, but a world that brings together the centuries of Matteo Ricci and Chairman Mao as if they were concurrent. There is no preaching here, but an honest and often sorrowful foray into that wilderness known as the heart of man." -ANTHONY ESOLEN

"Draws us compellingly into a wood between the worlds... The place we will find is as mysterious as it is beautiful." -ELEANOR BOURG NICHOLSON

"Peachey's captivating novel starts fast and carries on at similar pace as the main character undergoes one trial after another. If Acheson's eventful life is the main thread in the narrative, the anonymous 'city' where he learns, suffers, loves, and survives turns out to be no less important a character. An urban metaphor for Chinese civilisation and the harrowing Cultural Revolution, the city is vividly described, to the point of feeling alive to the reader." -FR. ARMAND DE MALLERAY, FSSP

"A mystical odyssey and a musical tapestry, where the epic imagination meets the Catholic poetic muse." -JOSEPH PEARCE