Harvest - Hardcover

Jim Crace

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0330445669 ISBN 13: 9780330445665

Publisher: Picador, 2013

Synopsis

Shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize.

As late summer steals in and the final pearls of barley are gleaned, a village comes under threat. A trio of outsiders – two men and a dangerously magnetic woman – arrives on the woodland borders and puts up a make-shift camp. That same night, the local manor house is set on fire.

Over the course of seven days, Walter Thirsk sees his hamlet unmade: the harvest blackened by smoke and fear, the new arrivals cruelly punished, and his neighbours held captive on suspicion of witchcraft. But something even darker is at the heart of his story, and he will be the only man left to tell it . . .

Told in Jim Crace’s hypnotic prose, Harvest evokes the tragedy of land pillaged and communities scattered, as England’s fields are irrevocably enclosed. Timeless yet singular, mythical yet deeply personal, this beautiful novel of one man and his unnamed village speaks for a way of life lost for ever.

About this title

Review:

'Unfolding in Crace's trademark rhythmic prose and brimming with unsentimental but intense feeling for the natural landscape, this lingering novel is as resonant as it is elusive.' Daily Mail

‘Jim Crace is the most generous of writers. A fabulist, an open heart, an imagination in full flight. There is something of a harvest in every book: the promise, the violence, the fall, the regain. And Harvest is one of his best novels ever. He is, quite simply, one of the great writers of our time.’ Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin

‘Harvest, his latest novel, dramatises one of the great under-told narratives of English history . . . Crace brings his signature combination of atmosphere and exactitude to every aspect of this far-off world . . . the prose is extraordinary: rich yet measured, estranged and familiar, both intimate and austere . . . Harvest can be read in mythical, even biblical terms, but the physical and emotional displacement of individuals and communities at its heart remains as politically resonant today as it was at the time.’ Guardian

‘Crace’s prose - percussive, rhythmic, resonant - is unmistakable.’ Independent on Sunday

‘The rhythmic power of his prose, with its vivid physical imagery, brings his stories to life . . . Crace is brilliant at evoking atmosphere, mood and an all-persuasive sense of place . . . Harvest has been announced by Crace as his final novel. If so . . . it is majestic leavetaking, honed by an unforgettable narrative voice: resigned, bewildered, ultimately hopeful . . . Few novels as fine or as complex in their apparent simplicity will be published this, or indeed any, year.’ Irish Times

‘Harvest is Jim Crace's most ambitious novel since Being Dead (1999) . . . Crace's stunning depiction of country life in all its hardship - less Tolstoy, more Hardy, but bleak-pastoral rather than idyllic-bucolic . . . Harvest is a mesmerising slow-burner of a novel, both a paean to a lost way of life and a timeless cautionary fable. . . . We gladly accompany Thirsk on his eventful seven-day journey of discovery, always aware of that one portentous word which slyly reappears as a leitmotif, signifying a better future beyond the village boundary, a word in which Jim Crace cleverly compounds his perennial twin concerns of place and time: hereafter.’ Literary Review

'The best of his that I've read . . . Full of the most wonderful descriptions . . . Very readable and very scary . . . A tour de force' Gillian Slovo, Saturday Review on BBC Radio 4

‘Crace evoked this musty, murky world, and the ambiguous persona of our protagonist within it, with wit and immediacy that bring it touchably close . . . The story that he constructs is involving and mysterious, stoked by vividly descriptive prose that’s never wastefully or showily verbose.’ Scotland on Sunday

‘This very beautifully written novel gives pause for thought and unearths a quintessential England, never stereotyped, which is also deeply and humanly unique. And, until he writes an even better one, this, for me, is Crace’s most satisfying, and probably, best book.’ Scotsman

‘Terrible, lyrical, beauty that is nothing like any other novel I have ever read . . . Crace achieves a cadence of speech which sounds and feels as if it is absolutely authentic.’ Spectator

Book Description:

Jim Crace's biggest novel since Being Dead draws once more on his genius with landscape and myth, to create a lost and bewitching English world

Shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize

Harvest is a masterful novel from the Booker-shortlisted author Jim Crace, in which he draws once more on his genius with landscape and myth to create a lost and bewitching English world.

'An achievement worthy to stand alongside those of Crace's great fictional influence, William Golding.' Sunday Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0330445669
• ISBN 13: 9780330445665
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320