Making of Incarnation

About the book

The most ambition and exciting novel yet from the Booker shortlisted author of C and Satin Island.

Bodies in motion. Birds, bees and bobsleighs. What is the force that moves the sun and other stars? Where's our fucking airplane? What's inside Box 808, and why does everybody want it?

Deep within the archives of time-and-motion pioneer Lillian Gilbreth lies a secret. Gilbreth helped birth the era of mass observation and big data but did she also discover a 'perfect' movement that would 'change everything'?

An international hunt begins for the one box missing from her records, and we follow contemporary motion-capture consultant Mark Phocan across geo-political fault lines and experimental zones in his search for it. And all the while, work is underway on the blockbuster film Incarnation, an epic space tragedy...

'Dazzling... The Making of Incarnation feels utterly original, utterly new, utterly magical' Neel Mukherjee, author of The Lives of Others

'Hugely interesting, energetic, wise and well written' GQ

'A rich and fascinating exercise in observation' Independent