'Compelling . . . this is a fable for the times ahead that feels
essential' Irish Times
'Stunning, insightful, deeply humane prose . . . Fisher indicts all of
us yet still offers hope that we may change the ending of this story'
Olivia Sudjic
A young man is found brutally murdered in the middle of the snowed-in
village of Wivenhoe. Over his body stands another man, axe in hand. The
gathered villagers must deal with the consequences of an act that no-one
tried to stop.
WIVENHOE is a haunting novel set in an alternate present, in a world
that is slowly waking up to the fact that it is living through an
environmental disaster. Taking place over twenty-four hours and told
through the voices of a mother and her adult son, we see how one small
community reacts to social breakdown and isolation.
Samuel Fisher imagines a world, not unlike our own, struck down and on
the edge of survival. Tense, poignant, and set against a dramatic
landscape, WIVENHOE asks the question: if society as we know it is lost,
what would we strive to save? At what point will we admit complicity in
our own destruction?
