''Disruptive and graceful beyond anything I''ve read'' SARAH HALL, author of Burntcoat ''Absolutely essential . . . gently and startlingly beautiful'' JENN ASHWORTH, author of Ghosted December 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, could you run to?

Autorentext
Andrew Miller's first novel, Ingenious Pain, was published by Sceptre in 1997. It won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for the best foreign novel published in Italy. It has been followed by Casanova, Oxygen, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award in 2001, The Optimists, One Morning Like a Bird, Pure, which won the Costa Book of the Year Award in 2011, The Crossing, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free, The Slowworm's Song and The Land in Winter, which won the Winston Graham Historical Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2025. Andrew Miller's novels have been published in translation in twenty countries. Born in Bristol in 1960, he currently lives in Somerset.

Klappentext

⭐ SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025 ⭐
⭐THE SUNDAY TIMES FICTION PAPERBACK OF THE YEAR ⭐
'Graceful, atmospheric, enormously satisfying'
SARAH JESSICA PARKER, BOOKER JUDGE 2025

'I love The Land in Winter so much... It's really, really, really, really good'
GILLIAN ANDERSON

'A classic in the making'
ELIZABETH DAY

'One of the best writers at work today'
TELEGRAPH

'Has an uncanny beauty and depth'
GUARDIAN

'Money, class, love: all of life is in there'
SUNDAY TIMES

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?

More praise for The Land in Winter
⭐ Winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2025 ⭐
⭐ Winner of the Winston Graham Historical Prize 2025 ⭐

'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, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

'An exquisite achievement, luminously written, full of wonder at the diversity and strangeness of human experience.'
FRANCIS SPUFFORD, author of Golden Hill

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