Loss leads to strange new world for Michel Faber

When Michel Faber’s wife died after an illness it had an inevitable impact on his next and last book he tells Richard Fitzpatrick

Michel Faber’s wife, Eva, had always been his first reader. She died from cancer last summer. His latest novel, The Book of Strange New Things, which is his first in over 12 years, was published a few months after her death. When it came to writing it, Faber says her illness, which she contracted in 2008, altered the approach he took to the novel’s story.

It is a compelling read, and lives up to Faber’s plan to make it the most unusual, ambitious and saddest thing he has written. Its protagonist, a Christian minister, Peter Leigh, 33, signs up with a faceless American corporation, USIC, to spread the Gospel to the inhabitants on its alien colony, Oasis. He leaves his wife, Bea, behind in England for his mission.