Gutenberg's Apprentice: A Novel

Alix Christie

Sep 2014 · Harper Collins

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A novel about the birth of the printing press “spotlights intriguing parallels between 15th-century Europe and the digital media of the twenty-first-century world” (The New York Times Book Review).

Youthful, ambitious Peter Schoeffer is on the verge of professional success as a scribe in Paris when his foster father, wealthy merchant and bookseller Johann Fust, summons him home to corrupt, feud-plagued Mainz to meet “a most amazing man.”

Johann Gutenberg, a driven and caustic inventor, has devised a revolutionary—and to some, blasphemous—method of bookmaking: a machine he calls a printing press. Fust is financing Gutenberg’s workshop and orders Peter, his adopted son, to become Gutenberg’s apprentice. Resentful at having to abandon a prestigious career as a scribe, Peter begins his education in the “darkest art.”

As his skill grows, so, too, does his admiration for Gutenberg and his dedication to their daring venture: copies of the Holy Bible. But mechanical difficulties and the crushing power of the Catholic Church threaten their work. Caught between the genius and the merchant, old ways and new, Peter and the men he admires must prevail against overwhelming obstacles—a battle that will change history, and irrevocably transform them. This enthralling literary novel evokes one of the most momentous events in history in a story of invention, intrigue, and betrayal, rich in atmosphere and detail, told through the lives of the three men who made the printing press possible.

“[A] stellar debut . . . masterful.” —Historical Novel Society

“Enthralling.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Atmospheric . . . a worthy tribute to the technological revolution it reimagines, as well as a haunting elegy to the culture of print . . . One thinks of Donna Tartt’s obsessive accounts of furniture decoration in The Goldfinch or even Philip Roth’s lovingly twisted empathy with glovemaker Swede Levov in American Pastoral. Such novels of craft and specialization take a writerly delight in the most intricate details of a particular trade while spinning rich prose out of its mysterious threads.” —The Washington Post

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Alix Christie is an author, journalist, and letterpress printer. She learned the craft as an apprentice to two master California printers, and owns and operates a 1910 Chandler & Price letterpress. She holds a master of fine arts degree from Saint Mary's College of California and lives in London, where she reviews books and arts for The Economist. Gutenberg's Apprentice is her first novel.