Bog Queen
A Novel
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- 289,00 Kč
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- 289,00 Kč
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AND ESQUIRE
In the gorgeous new novel by the New York Times bestselling author of Outlawed, "a strangely well-preserved Iron Age body turns up in an English bog, and the American forensic anthropologist on the case is thrust into an absorbing, complex mystery" (People magazine).
When a body is found in a bog in northwest England, Agnes, an American forensic anthropologist, is called to investigate. But this body is not like any she's ever seen. Though its bones prove it was buried more than two thousand years ago, it is almost completely preserved.
Soon Agnes is drawn into a mystery from the distant past, called to understand and avenge the death of an Iron Age woman more like her than she knows. Along the way, she must contend with peat-cutters who want to profit from the bog and activists who demand that the land be left undisturbed. Then there's the moss itself: a complex repository of artifacts and remains, with its own dark stories to tell.
As Agnes faces the deep history of what she has unearthed, she's also forced to question what she thought she knew about her talent, her self-reliance, and her place in the world. Flashing between the uncertainty of post-Brexit England and the druidic order of Celtic Europe at the dawn of the Roman era, Bog Queen brims with contemporary urgency and ancient wisdom as it connects across time two gifted, farsighted young women learning to harness their strange strengths in a landscape more mysterious and complex than either can imagine.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Inspired by the discovery of the preserved bog body called the Lindow Woman, this novel explores the collision between abstract goals and real peoples’ concerns. Agnes, a socially awkward but brilliant American anthropologist attached to the Ludlow coroner’s office in England, is asked to determine the cause of death of a body found preserved in a peat bog. It’s thought to be the victim in a decades-old cold case, but this woman died nearly 2000 years ago. Agnes believes she owes the body the courtesy of determining how she died. This brings her into conflict with the niece of the still-undiscovered murder victim, local environmentalists concerned about further damage to the bog, and the bog’s owners, who want to sell to developers. A parallel story is narrated by the Iron Age woman, a socially awkward but clever druid whose negotiations with a Romanized king puts her in conflict with the local warlord. And the moss colony in the bog also provides its own views on existence. Anna North’s thoughtful novel probes big questions in a way that’s both profound and relatable.