"A beautifully written and unexpectedly thrilling novel"
Winner of the Impac Prize 2015.
A beautifully written and unexpectedly thrilling novel, this book defies categorisation and almost reinvents itself from one chapter to the next. Dark, unsettling, intriguing and exciting it is that rare thing, a hugely enjoyable and readable book which will have you thinking about it and its themes for weeks to come. - Sarah Broadhurst
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2013.
Harvest, by Jim Crace, was my own ‘novel of the year’ pick when it came out. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2013, and it won the IMPAC Dublin Award, so I am obviously not alone in admiring it so much. Harvest is set in a village called simply The Village. No precise historical time period or geographical location are offered. We are … somewhere and somewhen in England, apparently the 17th century. We share in the villagers’ general ignorance about the wider world. And that ignorance, the vulnerability of it, becomes central to the story — which is about a period when land owners came to realize that there was more money and less uncertainty in sheep than in tenants and farming, with all the obvious implications for the farmers. The writing is exquisite, and though the story is dark it is not without redemption, and there is so much illumination and reward for a reader here. It’s a lament for a lost way of life, but also an alert as to the inevitability, and the consequences, of change. A brilliant novel.
Selected by our Spring 2021 Guest Editor, Guy Gavriel Kay
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
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