An endlessly rich and inventive historical fiction epic from the author of Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, set amid the political intrigue, scientific revolution and religious conflict of 17th-century Europe. As philosophers, adventurers and spies navigate a rapidly changing world, fortunes are made and empires reshaped.

'Genius ... You'll wish it were longer.' Time magazine

'An astonishing achievement.' Sunday Telegraph

WINNER OF THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD

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Daniel Waterhouse, fearless thinker and conflicted Puritan, moves among the era's greatest minds, as new ideas challenge old certainties, and where the world can be changed overnight.

The adventurer 'Half-Cocked Jack' escapes the streets of London and pursues fortune and infamy while the pox slowly tightens its grip.

And Eliza, rescued from a Turkish harem, reinvents herself as a spy, financier and pawn of the powerful, as the age of finance is born.

'Neal Stephenson rewrites history - for the dark prince of hacker fiction, looking backward is another way of seeing the future.' Wired

The first book in the Baroque Cycle.