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Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025
Winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2025
Winner of the Winston Graham Historical Prize 2025
'One of the best writers at work today' TELEGRAPH
'Has an uncanny beauty and depth... A novel that travels into the darkest places of history and the strangest corners of the human mind' GUARDIAN
'Money, class, love: all of life is in there' SUNDAY TIMES
'Tender, elegant, soulful and perfect... Superb' SAMANTHA HARVEY
'A classic in the making' ELIZABETH DAY
DECEMBER 1962, THE WEST COUNTRY.
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, 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 where he hoped to create a new version of himself, a project that's already faltering.
But when the ordinary cold of an English December gives way to violent blizzards, 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?
'Perfect' OBSERVER
‘Delicate and devastating' I PAPER
'Incredibly satisfying' FINANCIAL TIMES
'A novel of dazzling humanity and captivating, crystalline prose' MAIL ON SUNDAY
'I loved The Land in Winter... There were moments I thought of Penelope Fitzgerald... A thing of rare beauty' RACHEL JOYCE
'An exquisite achievement, luminously written, full of wonder at the diversity and strangeness of human experience.' FRANCIS SPUFFORD
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025
Winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2025
Winner of the Winston Graham Historical Prize 2025
'One of the best writers at work today' TELEGRAPH
'Has an uncanny beauty and depth... A novel that travels into the darkest places of history and the strangest corners of the human mind' GUARDIAN
'Money, class, love: all of life is in there' SUNDAY TIMES
'Tender, elegant, soulful and perfect... Superb' SAMANTHA HARVEY
'A classic in the making' ELIZABETH DAY
DECEMBER 1962, THE WEST COUNTRY.
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, 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 where he hoped to create a new version of himself, a project that's already faltering.
But when the ordinary cold of an English December gives way to violent blizzards, 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?
'Perfect' OBSERVER
‘Delicate and devastating' I PAPER
'Incredibly satisfying' FINANCIAL TIMES
'A novel of dazzling humanity and captivating, crystalline prose' MAIL ON SUNDAY
'I loved The Land in Winter... There were moments I thought of Penelope Fitzgerald... A thing of rare beauty' RACHEL JOYCE
'An exquisite achievement, luminously written, full of wonder at the diversity and strangeness of human experience.' FRANCIS SPUFFORD