The Land in Winter : Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical FictionA best book of the year for the Independent, Guardian, i Newspaper and Good Housekeeping'Tender, elegant, soulful and perfect. A novel that hits your cells and can be felt there, without your brain really knowing what's happened to it. Superb'SAMANTHA HARVEY, Booker Prize-winning author of Orbital'Delicate and devastating'INDEPENDENT, The 20 best books of the year'Miller may have written his best book yet . . . brilliance that is not to be missed'GUARDIAN, The best fiction of 2024'Incredibly satisfying'FINANCIAL TIMES'A novel of dazzling humanity and captivating, crystalline prose'MAIL ON SUNDAY'Perfect'RACHEL COOKE, OBSERVER'I loved The Land in Winter . . . There were moments I thought of Penelope Fitzgerald - that moment I have always loved in The Beginning of Spring when the birch trees seem to grow hands - those liminal moments that are kind of beyond words, or explanation, but Miller finds them anyway. It's a thing of rare beauty'RACHEL JOYCE, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry'Disruptive and graceful beyond anything I've read'SARAH HALL, author of BurntcoatDecember 1962, the West Country. In the darkness of an old asylum, a young man unscrews the lid from a bottle of sleeping pills. In the nearby village, two couples begin their day. Local doctor, Eric Parry, mulling secrets, sets out on his rounds, while his pregnant wife sleeps on in the warmth of their cottage. Across the field, in a farmhouse impossible to heat, funny, troubled Rita Simmons is also asleep, her head full of images of a past life her husband prefers to ignore. He's been up for hours, tending to the needs of the small dairy farm he bought, a place where he hoped to create a new version of himself, a project that's already faltering. There is affection - if not always love - in both homes: these are marriages that still hold some promise. But when the ordinary cold of an English December gives way to violent blizzards - a true winter, the harshest in living memory - the two couples find their lives beginning to unravel. Where do you hide when you can't leave home? And where, in a frozen world, can you run to?A masterful, page-turning examination of the minutiae of life, The Land in Winter is a masterclass in storytelling - proof yet again that Andrew Miller is one of Britain's most dazzling chroniclers of the human heart. PRAISE FOR ANDREW MILLER'Andrew Miller's writing is a source of wonder and delight'HILARY MANTEL'One of our most skilful chroniclers of the human heart and mind'SUNDAY TIMES'A writer of very rare and outstanding gifts'INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY'A highly intelligent writer, both exciting and contemplative'THE TIMES'A wonderful storyteller'SPECTATOR