Top ten books about circuses & spectacle

Born in Scotland, Elizabeth Macneal is a writer and potter based in London. The Doll Factory, Macneal’s debut novel, was an international bestseller, has been translated into twenty-nine languages and has been optioned for a major television series. It won the Caledonia Novel Award 2018.

Circus of Wonders, available now in the UK and out in the US in early 2022, is her second novel.

At the Guardian Mcneal tagged ten top books about circuses and spectacle, including:

Patient by Bettina Judd

Joice Heth. Sarah Baartman. Betsey Harris. These are just three of the names of the black women who have been exploited and assaulted through history, their bodies violated as sites of curiosity and science, and whom Bettina Judd takes as the core of her unforgettable poetry collection. Like many narratives about showmanship that explore how the voices of the performers or the patients have been lost and overwritten, this collection returns the power of storytelling to those who were denied it, imagining their voices in conversation with a modern speaker.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue