Land of the Living by Georgina Harding
A profound masterpiece on war, loss and survival, rendered in prose of rhythmic precision, subtlety and exceptional sensitivity, by the Orange Prize-shortlisted author of Painter of Silence 'Arresting and brutal … the finely tuned work of a writer exceptionally at ease with her craft and a testament to the power and poetry of clean and disciplined prose' Sadie Jones, Guardian Charlie’s experiences at the Battle of Kohima and the months he spent lost in the remote jungles of Assam during the Second World War are now history. Home and settled on a farm in Norfolk and newly married to Claire, he is one of the lucky survivors. Starting a family and working the land seem the best things a man can be doing. But a chasm exists between them. Memories flood Charlie’s mind; at night, on rain-slicked roads and misty mornings in the fields, the past can feel more real than the present. What should be said and what left unsaid? Is it possible to find connection and forge a new life in the wake of unfathomable horror? A beautifully conceived, deftly controlled and delicately wrought meditation on the isolating impact of war and the inescapable reach of the past, Georgina Harding’s haunting and lyrical novel questions the very nature of survival, and what it is that the living owe the dead.
Vivid, illuminating and unbearably tense, Land of the Living is a masterly meditation on trauma, on beauty, on the idea of home and the limits of love * Guardian *
A masterly novel of grief and conflict … Audacious and moving … What it means to be civilised and behave with decency are questions raised throughout this fine novel * Sunday Times *
A quietly powerful novel * Observer *
Remarkable and rare * Daily Mail *
Elegant and precise, Georgina Harding wonderfully describes Charlie’s sense of dislocation, his emotional unease and the impossibility of communicating complex feelings to those who haven’t experienced war * Sunday Express *
Tremendously imaginative, really compassionate … Manages to make them almost tangibly real, really immersive -- Frances Macmillan * BBC Radio 4 ‘Open Book’ *
A lyrical novel about war and memory * Guardian, Ones to Watch 2018 *
In sombre, elegant prose, Harding wonderfully describes Charlie’s sense of dislocation, his emotional unease and the impossibility of communicating his complex feelings and fears to those closest to him -- Eithne Farry * Mail on Sunday, The Best New Fiction *
Revelatory in many ways, shining a light on the darker aspects of war … Quiet power and unexpected grace … Adds to Harding’s reputation as an incisive chronicler of war and its aftermath * Financial Times *
Written with an admirable precision, and the dark of the narrative has to be teased out … It is a novel of ideas, for it invites you to think of questions of responsibility, exploitation, cruelty, brutality.. One of those rare novels which has you thinking, when you reach the end, that there is much you have passed over which demands a second reading to be fully felt and understood -- Allan Massie * Scotsman *
Over several restrained, poetic novels, Georgina Harding has carved out a space for herself as one of the most incisive explorers of physical adversity and its psychological effects … Harding’s graceful style and self-control illuminate the crushing weight of history on the individual, and how different strategies for survival can cause a lifetime of pain and regret … Land of the Living is a poised and carefully crafted novel of powerful, submerged emotions, taking an under-explored aspect of Britain’s war and finding in it something graceful and strange, mythic as well * Herald *
Disquieting * Times Literary Supplement *
Perfect – a flawless gem of a novel from start to finish … Wonderful, strange and wise -- Patrick McGrath
A masterly novel of grief and conflict … Audacious and moving … What it means to be civilised and behave with decency are questions raised throughout this fine novel * Sunday Times *
A quietly powerful novel * Observer *
Remarkable and rare * Daily Mail *
Elegant and precise, Georgina Harding wonderfully describes Charlie’s sense of dislocation, his emotional unease and the impossibility of communicating complex feelings to those who haven’t experienced war * Sunday Express *
Tremendously imaginative, really compassionate … Manages to make them almost tangibly real, really immersive -- Frances Macmillan * BBC Radio 4 ‘Open Book’ *
A lyrical novel about war and memory * Guardian, Ones to Watch 2018 *
In sombre, elegant prose, Harding wonderfully describes Charlie’s sense of dislocation, his emotional unease and the impossibility of communicating his complex feelings and fears to those closest to him -- Eithne Farry * Mail on Sunday, The Best New Fiction *
Revelatory in many ways, shining a light on the darker aspects of war … Quiet power and unexpected grace … Adds to Harding’s reputation as an incisive chronicler of war and its aftermath * Financial Times *
Written with an admirable precision, and the dark of the narrative has to be teased out … It is a novel of ideas, for it invites you to think of questions of responsibility, exploitation, cruelty, brutality.. One of those rare novels which has you thinking, when you reach the end, that there is much you have passed over which demands a second reading to be fully felt and understood -- Allan Massie * Scotsman *
Over several restrained, poetic novels, Georgina Harding has carved out a space for herself as one of the most incisive explorers of physical adversity and its psychological effects … Harding’s graceful style and self-control illuminate the crushing weight of history on the individual, and how different strategies for survival can cause a lifetime of pain and regret … Land of the Living is a poised and carefully crafted novel of powerful, submerged emotions, taking an under-explored aspect of Britain’s war and finding in it something graceful and strange, mythic as well * Herald *
Disquieting * Times Literary Supplement *
Perfect – a flawless gem of a novel from start to finish … Wonderful, strange and wise -- Patrick McGrath
Georgina Harding is the author of four previous novels: The Gun Room, The Solitude of Thomas Cave, The Spy Game, which was shortlisted for the Encore Award, and Painter of Silence, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2012. Georgina Harding lives in London and on a farm in the Stour Valley, Essex.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781408896235 |
| ISBN 10 | 1408896230 |
| Title | Land of the Living |
| Author | Georgina Harding |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing PLC |
| Year published | 2018-11-01 |
| Number of pages | 240 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |