Book description
When an English priest takes over a small Scottish parish, not
everyone is ready to accept him. He makes friends with two local
youths, Mark and Lisa, and clashes with a world he can barely
understand. The town seems to grow darker each night. Fate comes
calling and before the summer is out his quiet life is the focus of
public hysteria. Meanwhile a religious war is unfolding on his
doorstep . . . Be Near Me is a briliantly moving story of art and
politics, love and change and the way we live now.
Andrew O'Hagan was born in Glasgow in 1968. His first book, The
Missing, was published in 1995 and shortlisted for the
Esquire/Waterstone's/Apple Non-Fiction Award. Our Fathers, his debut
novel, was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize. His second novel,
Personality, was published in 2003 and won the James Tait Black
Memorial Prize for Fiction. In January of that year Granta named him
one of the Best of Young British Novelists and in April he received
the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts &
Letters. He lives in London.
