A work that is as disturbing as it is empathetic, as beautiful as it
is riveting. --Eimear McBride, ***New Statesman
In the aftermath of the Norman Invasion of 1066, William the Conqueror
was uncompromising and brutal. English society was broken apart, its
systems turned on their head. What is little known is that a fractured
network of guerrilla fighters took up arms against the French
occupiers.
In The Wake, a postapocalyptic novel set a thousand years in the past,
Paul Kingsnorth brings this dire scenario back to us through the eyes of
the unforgettable Buccmaster, a proud landowner bearing witness to the
end of his world. Accompanied by a band of like-minded men, Buccmaster
is determined to seek revenge on the invaders. But as the men travel
across the scorched English landscape, Buccmaster becomes increasingly
unhinged by the immensity of his loss, and their path forward becomes
increasingly unclear.
Written in what the author describes as a shadow tongue--a version of
Old English updated so as to be understandable to the modern
reader--The Wake renders the inner life of an Anglo-Saxon man with an
accuracy and immediacy rare in historical fiction. To enter Buccmaster's
world is to feel powerfully the sheer strangeness of the past. A tale of
lost gods and haunted visions, The Wake is both a sensational,
gripping story and a major literary achievement.
