The Land in Winter

(Paperback)

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December 1962, a small village near Bristol.

Eric and Irene and Bill and Rita. Two young couples living next to each other, the first in a beautiful cottage - suitable for a newly appointed local doctor - the second in a rundown, perennially under-heated farm. Despite their apparent differences, the two women (both pregnant) strike an easy friendship - a connection that comes as a respite from the surprising tediousness of married life, with its unfulfilled expectations, growing resentments and the ghosts of a recent past.

But as one of the coldest winters on record grips England in a never-ending frost and as the country is enveloped in a thick, soft, unmoving layer of snow, the two couples find themselves cut off from the rest of the world. And without the small distractions of everyday existence, suddenly old tensions and shocking new discoveries threaten to change the course of their lives forever.

A masterful, page-turning examination of the minutiae of life, The Land in Winter is a masterclass in storytelling - proof yet again that Andrew Miller is one of Britain's most dazzling chroniclers of the human heart.

Reviews

PRAISE FOR ANDREW MILLER

'His writing is a source of wonder and delight'
HILARY MANTEL

'One of our most skilful chroniclers of the human heart and mind'
SUNDAY TIMES

'Unique, visionary, a master at unmasking humanity'
SARAH HALL

'A highly intelligent writer, both exciting and contemplative'
THE TIMES

'A wonderful storyteller'
SPECTATOR

Author Bio

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 2011, The Crossing, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free and The Slowworm's Song.

Andrew Miller's novels have been published in translation in twenty countries. Born in Bristol in 1960, he currently lives in Somerset.