Alive in the Merciful Country

From a Costa Book of the Year winner, Booker nominee and double Granta-selected Best Young British novelist comes a searing portrayal of the gradual uncovering of one woman's past psychological wounds, set in motion by the arrival of an unexpected letter. ''Prose that soars and swoops like the birds she references … [Kennedy] spins pain into poetry and its glitter is authentic.'' ''Alive In The Merciful Country asks important questions about the nature of justice and mercy.'' ''An adventurous, often brilliant novelist … a wide-reaching, structurally playful novel.'' ''… it’s a page turner with all the elegance of literary fiction.'' ''Alive in the Merciful Country is an ambitious novel that asks potent questions about abuses of state and personal power … combines a beadily bleak eye with a standup’s comic timing and a profound humanity that breaks open the heart.'' ''... provocative, thoughtful and mysterious novel''

From a Costa Book of the Year winner, Booker nominee and double Granta-selected Best Young British novelist comes a searing portrayal of trauma, police abuse and the power of hope. 

Teaching nine-year-olds on Zoom. A relationship interrupted by enforced distance. A teenaged son who cannot leave the house. Anna McCormick is already struggling to cope with the unwanted twists 2020 has served up. But when an unstamped envelope arrives overnight, her past begins to cast its own long shadow on the present.

With an uncaring government compounding her woes and a hostile threat drawing closer, Anna must dig deep to keep hope alive for herself and those around her. 

This is a twisty, heart-racing page-turner and viscerally rendered portrayal of abuse of power by the state, by the police and by the villains much closer to home.

• | Author: A.L. Kennedy
• | Publisher: Saraband / Contraband
• | Publication Date: Jan 09, 2025
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Hardback
• | ISBN-13: 9781916812284
• | ISBN-10: 1916812287