The Wake

Paul Kingsnorth Press Reviews

'A literary triumph'
Adam Thorpe

'Extraordinary'
Philip Pullman

'A resonant, eloquent ballad of English identity, pride and fierce independence. It is a thrilling story. Read it out loud. It is like nothing else.'
Mark Rylance

'Reading Kingsnorth's book is to be immersed in the past and in a story in a way that I haven't really felt since childhood. It's time travel between hard covers, and the most glorious experience I've had with a book in years'
Lucy Mangan, the Guardian

'It takes time and concentration, but it is effort repaid because, like William Golding's The Inheritors (1955), it forces you into another, more ancient way of seeing things.'
The Sunday Times

'Haunting - more truly relevant to where we are now than many of the other books on the Man Booker longlist.'
Daily Mail

'Strange and extraordinary - this unusual novel has power. It lingers in the imagination.'
The Times

'The message of this extraordinary novel is as honest and timely as it is discomforting: being waecend to the grim fate of your society doesn't mean you can do anything to prevent it happening.'
Times Literary Supplement

'In its refusal to yield easy answers, Kingsnorth's extraordinary, unsettling tale of the 11th Century makes not only a surprisingly satisfying novel, but a deeply modern one, too.'
Melissa Harrison, Caught By The River

'An astonishing feat of imagination'
Heathcote Williams

'An extraordinary, original and spellbinding book'
Jay Griffiths