Alive in the Merciful Country
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Saraband / Contraband
Publishing:9th Jan '25
£18.99
This title is due to be published on 9th January, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
From a Costa Book of the Year winner, Booker nominee and double Granta-selected Best Young British novelist comes a searing portrayal of trauma, police abuse and the power of hope.
Teaching nine-year-olds on Zoom. A relationship interrupted by enforced distance. A teenaged son who cannot leave the house. Anna McCormick is already struggling to cope with the unwanted twists 2020 has served up. But when an unstamped envelope arrives overnight, her past begins to cast its own long shadow on the present.
With an uncaring government compounding her woes and a hostile threat drawing closer, Anna must dig deep to keep hope alive for herself and those around her.
This is a twisty, heart-racing page-turner and viscerally rendered portrayal of abuse of power by the state, by the police and by the villains much closer to home.
'Kennedy is a force of nature.' -- New York Times
'It seems everything [Kennedy] touches turns to art … she continues to impress with her psychological fearlessness and breathtaking affection for language.' -- New York Times
'A testament to the minor miracle of Kennedy's talent … a talented stylist, her lyrical flights are often musical and rich.' -- New York Magazine
'A distinctive monument in the landscape of contemporary Scottish writing. Truthful, surprising and visceral, it provokes the sort of response that reminds us what fiction is for.' -- LA Times Review of Books, books of the year
'Kennedy does bleak the way the Russians do epic; unremittingly, awesomely and undershot with redeeming humour' -- Sunday Times
'Kennedy brilliantly interweaves over-wrought internal dialogue with external outrageous acts. The unfolding tenderness of nature and of amity blend superbly with the casualness of daily horror.' -- Independent on Sunday
'Kennedy is a superb writer and the canniness of her observation keeps you reading' -- Sunday Times
'Kennedy's exquisite blending of the limits of pain and courage recall Primo Levi.' -- Financial Times
ISBN: 9781916812284
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
416 pages