The Raven's Nest

A deeply thoughtful, vivid, enquiring, genre-traversing book, closely attentive to the people and the landscapes with which it dwells. It asks hard questions - and offers no easy answers - about what it means to belong to a place, and to live well upon a part of the earth. Sarah's writing - crisp in its details, patient in its rhythms - draws its readers northwards and inwards upon a fascinating journey. * Robert Macfarlane *
Sarah Thomas' lyrical, thoughtful prose takes us on a journey, both physical and emotional, to the far north. * Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment *
An insightful, intuitive introduction to Icelandic culture, folklore, mysticism, language and nature. * Times Literary Supplement *
A quiet, generous and beautifully written meditation on what it means to try to belong to a singular culture on the 'edge' of Europe. * Literary Review *
Thomas' writing is the stuff of dreams - not in any whimsical way - rather, in the way of bones and stones; light and dark; hopes and fears. She leads the reader through various portals - from a place of unknowing - to one of hope. This book maps the self, the world and the spaces in between with such tender care. Truly a thing of wonder. * Kerri ní Dochartaigh, author of Thin Places *
A metamorphic book bursting with ideas and insights about belonging, acceptance, and supernatural joy. A chronicle of Iceland's ever-strange, prismic beauty and the myriad ways it works on the heart. * Dan Richards, author of Outpost: A Journey to the Wild Ends of the Earth *
The Raven's Nest asks what it means to belong to a place from which we do not originate. Anthropological and tender in detail. * Abi Andrews, author The Word for Woman is Wilderness *
The Raven's Nest is a candid yet beautiful memoir, an homage both to Iceland and a rapidly changing way of life, and a meditation on the constantly shifting nature of human identity. Thomas's evocative prose leaves striking images which glow in the memory long after the reading has ended. * Katharine Norbury, author of The Fish Ladder *
Sarah Thomas evokes characters and the culture, a sense of time and the landscape in beautiful prose which makes my brain do cartwheels. * Nancy Campbell, author of The Library of Ice *
The Raven's Nest is about a meeting of worlds. Sarah arrives in Iceland with a 'guest's clear eyes', as Icelanders say. A sincere and perceptive book that explores love, adventure and the search for connections in a big world. * Andri Snær Magnason, author of On Time and Water *
A delicate cartography of emotional landscapes as well as place, The Raven's Nest is also a journey into to the heart of our planetary crisis. Beautiful, moving and fascinating. * Nick Hunt, author of Outlandish *