Albion

Reviews

A superb novel deftly woven around themes of class, national identity and environmental collapse. In Albion Anna Hope engages, head-on, with some of the most urgent and challenging issues facing the world today, and transforms them into spellbinding family drama Anna Hope’s beautiful new novel Albion explores the complexities of family, trauma, nature, human nature, landscape and escape in language that is as provocative as it is tender The English country house novel re-imagined for our times: an exceptionally well-drawn portrait of a battling family, which also astutely wrestles with the issues around rewilding, inheritance, and colonialism A book that asks important questions about legacy - familial, historical and global - and which seeks to answer them with delicate insight and beautiful prose A compassionate, immersive novel that intelligently navigates historical pride and guilt, and the echo of history that resonates powerfully through the lives of Anna Hope’s compelling contemporary characters. Albion balances the reality of who the English were against the hope of who we might become It was around halfway through the first paragraph of Albion that I knew I had fallen in love with this book ... Anna Hope writes hauntingly beautiful poetic prose, and draws you deep into the heart of this family, their pain, joy, and love of the land they inhabit ... The book explores important, topical themes of today - nature, land and land ownership, climate change, class, and a contemporary reframing of colonial history - in a rich, layered, yet accessible way. I was inspired in particular by the way Anna Hope writes about human relationships with the natural world - as observer, actor, perpetrator, saviour, friend and foe ... This is a novel I will return to again and again One of our most gifted contemporary writers Expand reviews