Jacket for 'Land of the Living'

Publishers

UK - Bloomsbury

Land of the Living

By Georgina Harding

Published Nov 2018

‘A lyrical novel about war and memory’ – Guardian, Books of the Year 2018

 

Charlie’s experiences at the Battle of Kohima and the months he spent lost in the remote jungles of Assam are now history. Home and settled on a farm in Norfolk and newly married to Claire, he is one of the lucky survivors. Starting a family and working the land seem the best things a man can be doing.

But a chasm exists between them. Memories flood Charlie’s mind; at night, on rain-slicked roads and misty mornings in the fields, the past can feel more real than the present. What should be said and what left unsaid? Is it possible to find connection and forge a new life in the wake of unfathomable horror?

A beautifully conceived, deftly controlled and delicately wrought meditation on the isolating impact of war and the inescapable reach of the past, Georgina Harding’s haunting and lyrical novel questions the very nature of survival, and what it is that the living owe the dead.

 

‘Audacious and moving… Elegiac, often elliptical vignettes that immaculately simulate Charlie’s shame, regret and grief… Masterly’ – The Sunday Times

‘She is nowhere near as well-known as she should be… Exquisite.’ – Bookseller, Editor’s Choice

‘A novel of quiet power… Land of the Living might be revelatory in many ways – shining a light on the darker aspects of war, the limits to the might of empire and the shared moral culpability… It adds to Harding’s growing reputation as an incisive chronicler of war and its aftermath.’ – Financial Times

‘Remarkable and rare’ – Daily Mail