The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds (Paperback) 06-05-2010 Winner of The South Bank Show Awards: Literature 2010. Short-listed for Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2009.

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize After a lifetime's struggle with alcohol, critical neglect and depression, in 1840 the nature poet John Clare is incarcerated. The asylum, in London's Epping Forest, is run on the reformist principles of occupational therapy. At the same time, the young Alfred Tennyson, moves nearby and became entangled in the life of the asylum. This historically accurate, intensely lyrical novel, describes the asylum's closed world and Nature's paradise outside the walls: Clare's dream of home, of redemption, of escape.