⭐ Out now: The Land in Winter, shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025 ⭐

Ingenious Pain: the extraordinary prize-winning debut

Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award
'Astoundingly good' The Times

'Dazzling' Observer

'Timeless' Spectator

At the dawn of the Enlightenment, a man is born unable to feel pain. A source of wonder and scientific curiosity as a child, he rises through the ranks of Georgian society to become a brilliant surgeon. Yet as a human being he fails, for he can no more feel love and compassion than pain. Until, en route to St Petersburg to inoculate the Empress Catherine, he meets his nemesis and saviour.


Praise for Andrew Miller
'Andrew Miller's writing is a source of wonder and delight' Hilary Mantel

'One of our most skilful chroniclers of the human heart and mind' Sunday Times

'One of the best writers at work today' Telegraph

'A wonderful storyteller' Spectator

'One of those rare novelists who can rock up in any time and place and convincingly inhabit that particular historical moment' The Times

Prizes

Winner of International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 1999

A wild adventure through 18th-century England and Russia, medicine, madness, landscape and weather, rendered in prose of consummate beauty * Independent *
A wild adventure through 18th-century England and Russia, medicine, madness, landscape and weather, rendered in prose of consummate beauty * Independent *
A really remarkable first novel, original, powerfully written . . . Miller's narrative is gripping and his imagination extraordinary * Sunday Telegraph *
A really remarkable first novel, original, powerfully written . . . Miller's narrative is gripping and his imagination extraordinary * Sunday Telegraph *
Astoundingly good . . . it shines like a beacon * The Times *
Astoundingly good . . . it shines like a beacon * The Times *
Timeless and thought-provoking . . . it is something very rare in modern fiction, a true work of art * Spectator *
Timeless and thought-provoking . . . it is something very rare in modern fiction, a true work of art * Spectator *
Gripping . . . a dazzling debut * Observer *
Gripping . . . a dazzling debut * Observer *
Dazzling . . . Miller tackles notions of mortality and humanity to brilliant effect . . . truly wonderful * Evening Standard *
Dazzling . . . Miller tackles notions of mortality and humanity to brilliant effect . . . truly wonderful * Evening Standard *
An extraordinary first novel . . . one is constantly delighted with strange and vivid imagery, fresh and startling metaphors, flashes of insight, deft twists of plot and resonant variations on dominant themes . . . a mature novel of ideas soaked in the sensory detail of its turbulent times * New York Times Book Review *
An extraordinary first novel . . . one is constantly delighted with strange and vivid imagery, fresh and startling metaphors, flashes of insight, deft twists of plot and resonant variations on dominant themes . . . a mature novel of ideas soaked in the sensory detail of its turbulent times * New York Times Book Review *
Exceptionally intelligent and elegant . . . remarkable for its feeling and its humane sensibility * Sunday Times *
Exceptionally intelligent and elegant . . . remarkable for its feeling and its humane sensibility * Sunday Times *
A true rarity: a debut novel which is original, memorable, engrossing and subtle * Guardian *
A true rarity: a debut novel which is original, memorable, engrossing and subtle * Guardian *
Strange, unsettling, sad, beautiful and profound . . . the sense of period is brilliantly handled * Literary Review *
Strange, unsettling, sad, beautiful and profound . . . the sense of period is brilliantly handled * Literary Review *
More than merits comparison with the likes of Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus and Patrick Süskind's Perfume . . . a blistering debut * Time Out *
More than merits comparison with the likes of Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus and Patrick Süskind's Perfume . . . a blistering debut * Time Out *
The novel's evocation of the period, down to the finest detail, is thoroughly confident . . . a startling novel * Independent on Sunday *
The novel's evocation of the period, down to the finest detail, is thoroughly confident . . . a startling novel * Independent on Sunday *
A finely wrought and provocative novel * Daily Telegraph *
A finely wrought and provocative novel * Daily Telegraph *
Impressive * Mail on Sunday *
Impressive * Mail on Sunday *

Andrew Miller's first novel, Ingenious Pain, was published by Sceptre in 1997. It won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for the best foreign novel published in Italy. It has been followed by Casanova, Oxygen, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award in 2001, The Optimists, One Morning Like a Bird, Pure, which won the Costa Book of the Year Award in 2011, The Crossing, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free, The Slowworm's Song and The Land in Winter, which won the Winston Graham Historical Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2025. Andrew Miller's novels have been published in translation in twenty countries. Born in Bristol in 1960, he currently lives in Somerset.