Sarah Moss

Seventeen-year-old Silvie is spending the summer in an experimental archaeology camp in Northumberland with her parents, ‘The Prof’, a lecturer in Archaeology from a university down south and some of his students, including the free-spirited Molly. It’s Silvie’s dad’s passion – he works hard all year, and this is the only time he gets to practise his hobby – and so they must mimic the harshness of Iron Age life, wearing cotton tunics, foraging for food, and washing in the river. But the site of the camp holds a secret history – behind and ahead of Silvie’s narrative is that of a bog girl cruelly sacrificed by her people. As the summer fades, the fates of Silvie and the teenager millennia before her become terrifyingly ever closer.

Sarah Moss has once again written a gripping story about who we are, with a storyline reminiscent of the best British dramas.

“Combines exquisite nature writing, original characters and a cracking thriller plot to make a wonderful literary curiosity.” The Times

“Exquisite… At a time in which we are thinking more closely than ever about questions of nationalism and tradition, about walls and what they signify, this is an important novel that wears its timeliness lightly.” Financial Times