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Father Alberto and the Flying Girl

An exhilarating and wildly original historical novel set in medieval Europe
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Father Alberto and the Flying Girl

By: Timothy X Atack
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Summary

A bold, vivid and fiercely imaginative historical novel with an unforgettable narrator, exploring intolerance, kindness and what 'madness' really means.

In a remote medieval parish, under the rule of a ruthless Abbess, hapless new priest Alberto is charged with guarding those deemed mad – and therefore godless.

All ‘insane’ villagers are locked in the Abbey dungeons, released only for the riotous Feast of the Holy Fool. Alberto’s thankless task is to gather them again when the Feast ends – but as he comes to know them, he begins to question whether these so-called fools need saving at all.

Only one always escapes him: the Flying Girl, a mysterious child who refuses to speak or be caught.

As Alberto’s sympathy deepens into defiance the Abbess calls in the Inferrant Brethren: a brutal religious inquisition with whom Alberto has history... With pressure mounting, Alberto must decide where he stands. Protecting the vulnerable may cost him everything.

'Dark and strange and wonderful' MARK HADDON, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

'Hilarious, moving, and delightfully weird' JO HARKIN, author of The Pretender

© Timothy X Atack 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

 Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Medieval Small Town & Rural
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Critic reviews

'Dark and strange and wonderful . . . A marvellous piece of world-building, a celebration of care and a condemnation of the blindness of organised religion'
‘Father Alberto is hilarious, moving, and delightfully weird. A timeless portrait of humanity in its very real darkness, counterbalanced with a passionate sense of hope. I thought it was brilliant’
'Profound and strange and utterly original. A book about madness and miracles, faith and pain, human frailty and human kindness - you have to read it to believe it'
'I've rarely read anything so vivid and empathetic, so gentle and yet utterly heartbreaking. It's historical fiction with a modern message, but not in a way that feels trite. It's religious but in a firmly human way. And it's about love, but there's no twee romance in sight'
'I love historical fiction in which the route to the pre-modern – as a place, a time, and an earlier way of seeing and being – is furrowed through language. Father Alberto and the Flying Girl is one of these books. I was absorbed by every sight and sound on the page. Maybe not since Alan Garner or Peter Ackroyd has a word-dream of the past been conjured with such moving and brilliant magic'
'Boldly written, richly physical and brilliantly inventive, Father Alberto and the Flying Girl lets us inhabit a beautiful, cruel medieval world made resplendent with a memorable cast of strange and wondrous characters, both human and animal. A moving and spiritual debut novel. I look forward very much to what Timothy X Atack does next'
'The thing that struck me about this book (aside from its pitch-perfect, super-consistent tone, and the sharpness of the writing line-by-line) was its relevance. It’s about care, compassion and kindness, in the face of an unforgiving world. The story is as strange as it is universal, as dark as it is joyous, as hilarious as it is heartfelt: it's a truly special book'
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