Cover

Land of the Living

‘A masterly novel of grief and conflict … Audacious and moving… What it means to be civilised and behave with decency are questions raised throughout this fine novel’ Sunday Times

‘Land of the Living is a poised and carefully crafted novel of powerful, submerged emotions, taking an under-explored aspect of Britain’s war and ending in it something graceful and strange, mythic as well’ Allan Massie, Herald

‘Revelatory in many ways, shining a light on the darker aspects of war’ Nilanjana Roy, Financial Times

‘A landscape of arresting beauty and extreme violence …Vivid, illuminating and unbearably tense, this is a masterly meditation on trauma, on beauty, on the idea of home and on the limits of love’ Guardian

‘The quiet power of Georgina Harding’s novel lies in how she conveys with such bruising lyricism the way language fails…. Land of the Living is a moving testament to the battle that starts once the fighting has stopped’ The Times

‘Her Land of the Living is as wise and haunting as its predecessors’ Lucy Hughes Hallett, New Statesman Books of the Year

The Gun Room

‘Georgina Harding’s novel is the finely tuned work of a writer exceptionally at ease with her craft and a testament to the power and poetry of clean and disciplined prose… The Gun Room focuses minutely on one man and in doing so it tells a deep history of the many men who, having seen war, struggle to be anything but soldiers’ Sadie Jones, Guardian

‘The narrative flits between past and present in an impressionistic manner; facts and character emerge slowly. The dreamlike quality is heightened by Harding’s sharply observed prose, conjuring up with great intensity the claggy English fields, Vietnam’s pockmarked delta and Tokyo’s ordered suburbs’ Sunday Telegraph

‘A captivating, superbly written novel about the impossibility of escaping from the past’ Mail on Sunday

‘A powerful novel about war and its aftermath in memory … The narrative attends to its people with delicacy and detail. Stubborn and painful memories are evoked in a nuanced understatement, and the frequent inarticulacy of the characters only intensifies the power of the prose. The writing is allusive without ever losing lucidity, and the whole is beautifully orchestrated. It is an excellent novel’ Abdulrazak Gurnah, Financial Times Summer Reading

GEORGINA HARDING is the author of five previous novels: The Solitude of Thomas Cave, The Spy Game, a BBC Book at Bedtime and shortlisted for an Encore Award, Painter of Silence, shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2012; and, most recently, The Gun Room and Land of the Living. Together, The Gun Room, Land of the Living and Harvest make up the critically acclaimed Harvest Cycle. In 2021, her short story ‘Night Train’ was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. Georgina lives most of the time on a farm in the Stour Valley, Essex.

By the Same Author

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

FICTION

The Solitude of Thomas Cave

The Spy Game