Review
"Edric's work constitutes one of the most astonishing bodies of work to have appeared from a single author for a generation."
— Daily Telegraph
"For more than 20 years now, Robert Edric's unflinching eye for human cruelty has roamed across centuries and continents."
— Sunday Times
— Daily Telegraph
"For more than 20 years now, Robert Edric's unflinching eye for human cruelty has roamed across centuries and continents."
— Sunday Times
Product Description
The stunning new novel from one of the UK's finest literary writers.
The far north of England, one hundred years in the future, the Gulf stream has ceased: Quinn has been appointed by the government to conduct an audit on a remote area of land designated for a brand new model town. As Quinn arrives to greet the local developer, the surveillance cameras spin into overdrive, and soon he is immersed in a quagmire of corruption that will put his integrity to the ultimate test.
He meets Owen, a suicidal farmer whose every last pig, chicken, and sheep has been culled. And Winston, a former journalist and alcoholic with a gallery of incriminating photos of rising water below the site; and Pollard, the local Man of God whose faith is for sale. But it is Anna, Quinn's some-time girlfriend in charge of 'digging, filling and capping' the dead cattle pits, who faces the deepest abyss of all. And as the heavens open once again, the mountains of toxic soil that surround the site slowly begin to shift.
An all too plausible Orwellian vision that depicts what is likely to unfurl if climate changes move implacably on, Robert Edric's latest novel is a devastating portrait of Man's ever-quickening descent into a self-inflicted hell. It is Edric's finest novel yet.
The far north of England, one hundred years in the future, the Gulf stream has ceased: Quinn has been appointed by the government to conduct an audit on a remote area of land designated for a brand new model town. As Quinn arrives to greet the local developer, the surveillance cameras spin into overdrive, and soon he is immersed in a quagmire of corruption that will put his integrity to the ultimate test.
He meets Owen, a suicidal farmer whose every last pig, chicken, and sheep has been culled. And Winston, a former journalist and alcoholic with a gallery of incriminating photos of rising water below the site; and Pollard, the local Man of God whose faith is for sale. But it is Anna, Quinn's some-time girlfriend in charge of 'digging, filling and capping' the dead cattle pits, who faces the deepest abyss of all. And as the heavens open once again, the mountains of toxic soil that surround the site slowly begin to shift.
An all too plausible Orwellian vision that depicts what is likely to unfurl if climate changes move implacably on, Robert Edric's latest novel is a devastating portrait of Man's ever-quickening descent into a self-inflicted hell. It is Edric's finest novel yet.
About the Author
ROBERT EDRIC was born in 1956. His novels include The Sword Cabinet, The Book of the Heathen (shortlisted for the 2001 WH Smith Literary Award), Peacetime (longlisted for the Booker Prize 2002), Gathering the Water (longlisted for the Booker Prize 2006), The Kingdom of Ashes and In Zodiac Light.
