'Compelling . . . this is a fable for the times ahead that feels essential' Irish Times'Stunning, insightful, deeply humane prose . . . Fisher indicts all of us yet still offers hope that we may change the ending of this story' Olivia Sudjic
A young man is found brutally murdered in the middle of the snowed-in village of Wivenhoe. Over his body stands another man, axe in hand. The gathered villagers must deal with the consequences of an act that no-one tried to stop.
WIVENHOE is a haunting novel set in an alternate present, in a world that is slowly waking up to the fact that it is living through an environmental disaster. Taking place over twenty-four hours and told through the voices of a mother and her adult son, we see how one small community reacts to social breakdown and isolation.
Samuel Fisher imagines a world, not unlike our own, struck down and on the edge of survival. Tense, poignant, and set against a dramatic landscape, WIVENHOE asks the question: if society as we know it is lost, what would we strive to save? At what point will we admit complicity in our own destruction?
Read MoreQuiet, fable-like menace radiates from every page of Wivenhoe. Elegant and searching, it asks vital questions about what it means to be part of a community - about integrity, belonging, and how darkness can go unchecked when isolation and suspicion sets in - questions that now feel more relevant than ever.Wivenhoe explores the ways disasters make us both less and more ourselves. I was particularly moved by Fisher's careful tallying of the small choices that are made within a family - the secret hurts and private allegiances. While it is a book about climate change, dystopias and all, it is at the root about love. I loved it.