Harvest
shortlisted for the Booker Prize
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4.3 • 4 Ratings
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- €6.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and now a film adaptation starring Caleb Landry Jones. Jim Crace creates a haunting world in Harvest.
‘Extraordinary’ – The Guardian
‘Inimitably excellent’ – Boyd Tonkin, The Independent
As late summer steals in and the final pearls of barley are gleaned, a village comes under threat. A trio of outsiders – two men and a dangerously magnetic woman – arrive on the woodland borders triggering a series of events that will see Walter Thirsk’s village unmade in just seven days: the harvest blackened by smoke and fear, cruel punishment meted out to the innocent, and allegations of witchcraft.
But something even darker is at the heart of Walter’s story, and he will be the only man left to tell it . . .
‘Terrible, lyrical beauty that is nothing like any other novel I have ever read’ – Spectator
‘He is, quite simply, one of the great writers of our time’ – Colum McCann
Winner of the James Tait Black Prize
Winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize
Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
Now part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Harvest is the story of an isolated agrarian village where outsiders are received with violent suspicion. British novelist Jim Crace’s mesmerising novel is narrated by Walter Thirsk, a one-time manservant who joined the community through marriage and maintains a degree of distance from his course, superstitious neighbours. Sharp, reliable, and uncommonly introspective, Thirsk is perfectly positioned to observe the big changes encroaching on the village. Crace expertly orchestrates the atmosphere of menace, proving once again his formidable talent for crafting allegorical tales about the heavy social and psychological tolls of modernity and globalisation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his previous 10 novels, the versatile Crace has been heralded for his firmly rooted, painstakingly detailed impressions of time and place, and his latest work is no exception. In fact, the setting an isolated English farming village, in an unspecified past, with its "planched and thicketed" inhabitants is so imaginatively described that it stands as the book's richest character. Over the course of seven days following the harvest, the hamlet is alight with sudden change. A mysterious fire has set Master Kent's manor stables and dovecote ablaze. Three newcomers two men and an ominously alluring woman who arrived that same night are hastily blamed for the fire. All three have their heads shaved as punishment, and the men are shackled for a week to a pillory. When one of them dies and the master's favorite horse is later found bludgeoned to death, accusations of witchcraft erupt from within the townsfolk's ranks and nothing, not even the secretive Master Kent's halfhearted attempt at rooting out the truth and delivering justice, can quell the thirst for revenge that rattles the once principled town to its foundation. Walter Thirsk plays the perfect unreliable narrator; his deliberations about Master Kent's true intentions, his neighbors' guilt, and his own role in the events deepen an already resonant story. Crace's signature measured delivery and deliberate focus create unforgettably poetic passages that quiver with beauty. An electrifying return to form after All That Follows.
