Book description
Winter 1836, and the Belle of Wilmington discharges its doomed crew on
Wherrytown. Little daunted, the Captain and his sailors flirt, drink and
brawl their way through the village, marooned along with Aymer Smith, a
virgin and a blunderer in search of a wife. As vivid and alive as
characters by Dickens, these men play out their dreams against a
haunting, monumental landscape, bringing the New World back to the Old,
with fresh discoveries, fresh hazards, fresh hopes. 'The passions and
mores of the 1830s are flawlessly delineated in this masterly novel,
imbued with the tang and power of the sea' Independent
Jim Crace is the author of Continent, The Gift of Stones, Arcadia,
Signals of Distress, Quarantine (1998 Whitbread Novel of the Year;
shortlisted for the Booker Prize), Being Dead (2001 National Book
Critics' Circle Award), The Devil's Larder, Six and The Pesthouse. His
novels have been translated into twenty-six languages. In 1999 Jim
Crace was elected to the Royal Society of Literature.
