Hunters in the Snow - Hardcover

Hildyard, Daisy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022409744X ISBN 13: 9780224097444

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 2013

Synopsis

After his death, a young woman returns to her grandfather’s farm in Yorkshire. At his desk she finds the book he left unfinished when he died. Part story, part scholarship, his eccentric history of England moves from the founding of the printing press into virtual reality, linking four journeys, separated by the centuries, of four great men. The exiled Edward IV lands in England and marches on London for one final attempt to win back the throne; Tsar Peter the Great, implausibly disguised as a carpenter, follows his own retinue around frozen London; the former African slave Olaudah Equiano takes his book-tour down a Welsh coal-mine; and Herbert, Lord Kitchener, mysteriously disappears at sea in 1916.

These are the stories she remembers him telling her, and others too – about medieval miracles and EU agricultural subsidies; old people and fallen kings; homemade fireworks and invented dogs; Arctic ice cores, sunk ships, drowning horses, salt, sperm, carbon and miners. The history of great men loses its way in the stories of ordinary great-grandparents, grandparents and parents, including the historian’s own.

Hunters in the Snow marks the debut of a truly remarkable young writer.

About this title

Review:

"A beautiful ragbag of glittering scraps and vivid images... This is a stunning first novel; Hildyard’s writing is superb." (Kate Saunders The Times)

"Truly dazzling... A formidably original book... A considerable work of literature" (A. N. Wilson Spectator)

"Hunters in the Snow is a brilliant debut. Its investigations into the individual's relationship to history call to mind the best of Sebald." (Kevin Powers author of The Yellow Birds)

"[Hildyard's] debut novel is a pleasure throughout, in its haunting evocations of a historian’s life and work." (Peter Carty Independent)

"A remarkably intelligent debut" (Lucian Robinson Observer)

Book Description:

A beguiling first novel about history, truth and falsehood, the ordinary and the very, very strange

About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 022409744X
• ISBN 13: 9780224097444
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320