***Out now: Andrew Miller’s new novel THE LAND IN WINTER***
‘ANDREW MILLER’S WRITING IS A SOURCE OF WONDER AND DELIGHT’ Hilary Mantel
‘ONE OF OUR MOST SKILFUL CHRONICLERS OF THE HUMAN HEART AND MIND’ Sunday Times
Winner of the Highland Book Prize, shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize and a book of the year for the Guardian, the New Statesman, the Spectator and BBC History Magazine
‘Excellent’
Observer
‘Gripping’
Daily Mail
‘Immersive’
The Times
A traumatised soldier in search of peace, a nail-biting hunt to the death – the rapturously acclaimed eighth novel from the author of Pure
When Captain John Lacroix returns to England after fighting Napoleon’s forces in Spain, he is not the man he was. A survivor of the British arm’s infamous retreat to Corunna, he carries with him a shameful secret, one he will travel to the outer reaches of Scotland to forget.
Lacroix’s journey to the Hebrides leads to encounters with thieves and free thinkers, to unexpected friendships, even love. But as the short northern summer reaches its zenith, the shadow of the enemy is creeping closer – unbeknownst to Lacroix, a vicious English corporal and a Spanish officer are on his trail. Freedom, for John Lacroix, will come at a high price.
PRAISE FOR ANDREW MILLER
‘Unique, visionary, a master at unmasking humanity’
Sarah Hall
‘A writer of very rare and outstanding gifts’
Independent on Sunday
‘A highly intelligent writer, both exciting and contemplative’
The Times
‘A wonderful storyteller’
Spectator
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Reviews
A propulsive, beautifully written investigation into atrocity, guilt and new beginnings
A layered, riveting novel from a skilled storyteller
He is a very stylish, almost painterly writer, and he has Hilary Mantel's gift for historical reconstruction, for describing the past without making it seem like a wax museum. In some of his best books - like Ingenious Pain, his first, about an 18th-century doctor, and the more recent Pure, about an engineer in pre-revolutionary France trying to clean up an ancient cemetery - he brings off the Mantel trick of plunging you so deeply into the past that before long you take it completely for granted . . . A subtheme of this novel, where one of the main characters can't see and the other can't hear, is unknowability, how hard it is to make sense of the world . . . In its formal slipperiness, first one kind of book, then another, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free seems to be making the same point: that things are never quite what you expect, and history is altogether stranger than most accounts suggest. What makes Miller's own account so riveting is its alertness to wonder and unpredictability.
The joy of reading an Andrew Miller novel is his obvious passion for story and sensual language, and his ability to interweave the two seamlessly. The former is an often-forgotten art form in the contemporary novel, which often seeks to impress rather than entertain, but the latter is what makes him one of the most impressive novelists at work today
He is a very stylish, almost painterly writer, and he has Hilary Mantel's gift for historical reconstruction, for describing the past without making it seem like a wax museum . . . A subtheme of this novel, where one of the main characters can't see and the other can't hear, is unknowability, how hard it is to make sense of the world . . . things are never quite what you expect, and history is altogether stranger than most accounts suggest. What makes Miller's own account so riveting is its alertness to wonder and unpredictability
Miller strikes an impressive balance between adventure and atmosphere