The Hopkins Conundrum

‘Genuinely funny and deeply poignant’ – Daily Express LONGLISTED: Waverton Good Read Award Tim Cleverley inherits a failing pub in Wales. The only thing of interest is its location, which is down the road from the remote Jesuit seminary where Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote his masterpiece, The Wreck of the Deutschland, about the death of a group of nuns fleeing Germany on board a doomed ship. To Tim, the opaque religious poetry is incomprehensible – almost as if it’s written in code. This gives him an idea. Desperate for passing trade, he contacts an American author – famous as a purveyor of Holy Grail hokum – suggesting he write a book about the poet, the area and a recently discovered, and entirely fabricated, ‘mystery’. Fortunately for Tim, the famous author is going through a period of writer's block and latches on to his idea at once. But will Tim’s new relationship with a genuine Hopkins fan scupper the plan? The Hopkins Conundrum blends the real stories of Hopkins and the shipwrecked nuns while casting a wry eye on the Da Vinci Code industry in a highly original mix of fiction, literary biography and satirical commentary.