The Library of Traumatic Memory

The first literary science fiction novel from Neil Jordan, visionary director of The Company of Wolves and Interview with the Vampire In a windswept corner of a forgotten peninsula, love and loss echo through the halls of a mansion built on secrets. Here memory is currency of the future, and the past refuses to stay buried. In the year 2084, Christian Cartwright, a quiet librarian at the enigmatic Huxley Institute, spends his days archiving the world’s most painful memories in the Library of Traumatic Memory. But when his lover Isolde dies in a mysterious car crash, Christian secretly resurrects her as a digital consciousness — an act of grief, obsession, and defiance. As Christian navigates a world where memories can be edited, dreams harvested, and the dead made to speak, he uncovers a deeper conspiracy buried in the Institute’s foundations — one that stretches back centuries to his 18th-century ancestor Montagu Cartwright, the architect of the Huxley Mansion. Montagu’s obsidian mirror and copper model may hold the key to a reality where architecture shapes fate and time loops back on itself. Blending gothic mystery, speculative science, and philosophical depth, The Library of Traumatic Memory is a haunting meditation on love, loss, and the ethics of memory. As the past and future collide, Christian must decide what it means to remember — and what it costs to forget.