In this critically acclaimed and bestselling novel, Ronald Wright has fashioned a story for our times, an unforgettable chronicle of love, plague and time travel in the tradition of Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Handmaid's Tale.

RONALD WRIGHT is an award-winning historian, essayist, and the author of ten books of fiction and nonfiction published in sixteen languages and more than forty countries. His 2004 CBC Massey Lectures, A Short History of Progress, was a #1 national bestseller, won the Libris Award for Nonfiction Book of the Year, and was the basis for the Martin Scorsese–produced documentary Surviving Progress. His other bestselling nonfiction books include the BC Book Prize–winning history What Is America?; Stolen Continents, which won the Gordon Montador Award; and Among the Maya. His first novel, A Scientific Romance, won the 1997 David Higham Prize for Fiction and was a Globe and Mail, Sunday Times, and New York Times book of the year. Wright contributes criticism to the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other publications. He lives in British Columbia.

Ronald Wright's profile page

"Wright has come up with a treasure, a delightfully witty and suspenseful fantasy — in the rip-roaring tradition of the masters."
—Alberto Manguel, The Globe and Mail

"[A] virtuoso performance, an audacious leap ... into the unknown ... both beautifully realized and macabre.... This is an extraordinary novel, a brilliant synthesis of interpretive and imaginative elements, and, like the best fiction, a trenchant commentary on reality."
—The Financial Post

"Dazzling — A Scientific Romance is — poetic, sexy, satirical, [and] layered with rich bits from the author's well-stocked mind."
—The Globe and Mail

"A ripping yarn packed with head-turning ideas.... [Wright] artfully uses the archeology of the future to satiric ends.... A Scientific Romance is a feast of a read, succeeding both as entertainment and a provocative parable of environmental limits."
—Ted Mumford, NOW
"... A powerful visionary core ... few writers have imagined the future with such compelling and tragic urgency."
—John Bemrose, Maclean's
"Pure pleasure [and] — perfectly imagined....A deeply seductive and brilliantly sustained piece of adventure writing — enthrallingly descriptive, [which] turns into a compelling cultural satire."
—The Observer

"In 100 years' time this book should be a classic."
—The Guardian
"A skillful, thoughtful fantasy of the postmillennium ..."
—The New York Times Book Review
"Cool, clever, and unsettling, A Scientific Romance [is] imaginatively created, richly detailed and at times effortlessly funny, [yet] bursting with rage at what is happening around us."
—The Australian Bulletin

"...gloriously bizarre plotline...Ronald Wright..plays slyly with his literary tradition in his impressive first novel."
—Sydney Morning Herald