Featured on The Book Show on Sky Arts on 8 April 2010.
Rose Tremain won the Orange Prize for Fiction for The Road Home and returns with Trespass. A captivating thriller, set in southern France, it depicts two sets of siblings confronting the past, with deadly consequences.
In a silent valley stands an isolated stone farmhouse, the Mas Lunel. Its owner is Aramon Lunel, an alcoholic so haunted by his violent past that he's become incapable of all meaningful action, letting his hunting dogs starve and his land go to ruin. Meanwhile, his sister, Audrun, alone in her modern bungalow within sight of the Mas Lunel, dreams of exacting retribution for the unspoken betrayals that have blighted her life. Into this closed Cevenol world comes Anthony Verey, a wealthy but disillusioned antiques dealer from London. Now in his sixties, Anthony hopes to remake his life in France, and he begins looking at properties in the region. From the moment he arrives at the Mas Lunel, a frightening and unstoppable series of consequences is set in motion. Two worlds and two cultures collide. Ancient boundaries are crossed, taboos are broken, a violent crime is committed. And all the time the Cevennes hills remain, as cruel and seductive as ever, unforgettably captured in this powerful and unsettling novel, which reveals yet another dimension to Rose Tremain's extraordinary imagination.
About the Author
Rose Tremain won the Dylan Thomas Short Story Award (for The Colonel's Daughter). Her stories have been frequently read on Radio 4 and have been published in papers and journals all over the world. Her novels have won many prizes including: the Whitbread Novel of the Year (Music and Silence); the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Prix Femina Etranger (Sacred Country); the Sunday Express Book of the Year, the Angel Literary Award and shortlisted for the Booker Prize (Restoration) and a Giles Cooper Award (for her radio play, Temporary Shelter). Her most recent novel, The Colour, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and selected for the Daily Mail Reading Club promotion. She is married with one daughter, and lives in Norfolk and London with the literary biographer, Richard Holmes.
If I'm asked who is my literary role model, it's Tremain. I love
the fact that she's very experimental, and is always setting herself
new challenges and new forms. Her historical writing is inspirational
because of its authenticity, and the powerful story-telling. I've
chosen The Road Home because I found it very absorbing, and a new direction for Tremain.
03 Sep
Sebastian Faulk's - best-selling Birdsong published - He wanted to be a taxi driver until he first read George Orwell in 1968 when he decided on becoming a novelist. Birdsong is based on experiences of his grandfather during WWI. Read Birdsong by Sebastien Faulks
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