Fantasy Author Francis Spufford Shares Top Five

- Francis Spufford's own foray into fantasy includes the 2026 novel *Nonesuch*, a historical fantasy set during the London Blitz. His earlier work, *Cahokia Jazz*, is an alternate-history noir novel that won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. - He has written an unauthorized novel set in C.S. Lewis's Narnia universe titled *The Stone Table*, which takes place between *The Magician's Nephew* and *The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe*. Spufford has distributed self-printed copies to friends. - Spufford's transition to fiction came after a successful career writing acclaimed non-fiction on a wide range of subjects, including the history of polar exploration and a memoir about his childhood reading. - He has cited Ursula K. Le Guin as a significant influence on his life as a reader and writer. In a 2017 interview, he noted her late-period brilliance with the novel *Lavinia* and the *Annals of the Western Shore* series. - For his Booker Prize-longlisted novel *Light Perpetual*, Spufford drew inspiration for its time structure from Daniel Abraham's four-part fantasy series, *The Long Price Quartet*. - His recent novel, *Cahokia Jazz*, is described as a plot-heavy noir detective story with a jazz soundtrack, set in the 1920s in an alternate American history. - In addition to Le Guin and C.S. Lewis, Spufford has also expressed admiration for the work of authors such as Michael Chabon, Penelope Fitzgerald, and Alasdair Gray. - Spufford's writing often blends genres; he has described his novel *Red Plenty* as a "nonfiction novel" and sees both historical fiction and science fiction as springing from a similar imaginative fascination with how different worlds work.