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Sacred Country
Sacred Country
Jan 10, 2026 1:17 AM

Author:Rose Tremain

Sacred Country

From the author of The Gustav Sonata

At the age of six, Mary Ward, the child of a poor farming family in Suffolk, has a revelation: 'I am not Mary. That is a mistake. I am not a girl. I'm a boy.' So begins a heroic struggle to change gender, while around her others also strive to find a place of safety and fulfilment in a savage and confusing world.

Over a million Rose Tremain books sold

'A writer of exceptional talent ... Tremain is a writer who understands every emotion' Independent I

'There are few writers out there with the dexterity or emotional intelligence to rival that of the great Rose Tremain' Irish Times

'Tremain has the painterly genius of an Old Master, and she uses it to stunning effect' The Times

'Rose Tremain is one of the very finest British novelists' Salman Rushdie

'Tremain is a writer of exemplary vision and particularity. The fictional world is rendered with extraordinary vividness' Marcel Theroux, Guardian

Reviews

A remarkable novel

—— The Times

A major book

—— Daily Telegraph

Tremain is superb

—— Independent

Funny, absorbing and quite original. I've read nothing to touch it this year

—— Literary Review

Sacred Country is a book that we give to our friends and are glad to have read…it makes us look forward to Ms. Tremain’s other books with hungry pleasure

—— New York Times

Griffiths’s novel poses some fascinating questions…[Broken Ghost’s] exploration of the unfulfilled dreams of an underclass of drug addicts and single mothers is intelligent and challenging.

—— Max Davidson , Mail on Sunday

Griffiths submerges the reader in a prosaic world of benefit investigations, bare-knuckle boxing, and watching Jeremy Kyle with Diamond White cider… Griffiths’s novel is an unusual mix of political and mystical, lifted by the possibility…of social transformation.

—— Phil Baker , Sunday Times

[Griffiths has an] astonishing ability to downshift from an unsentimental and lyrical evocation of the natural world to the seamy and sordid rendering of the basest of human interaction… Broken Ghost is about what seeps out at the periphery when the centre is rotten.

—— Duncan White , Spectator

In Broken Ghost he [Griffiths] has produced what will surely turn out to be one of the most important and engaging novels in post-Brexit British literature.

—— Charlie Connelly , New European

Broken Ghost succeeds through its unflinching approach. It is a tempestuous journey of recovery and decay all the way up to the despotism of its harrowing finish which serves as a wrenching reminder that the prelude of the dystopian tomorrow is today.

—— Gareth Kent , Wales Arts Review

[Broken Ghosts] revels in the unpleasant truth of how profane people really are… thoroughly political… Griffiths wants the reader to feel ostracized from the characters to the same extent that the characters feel ostracized from wider society.

—— Samuel Graydon , Times Literary Supplement

A glittering and ferocious portrait of our time… wonderfully angry, funny, involving … Broken Ghost by Niall Griffiths…is a bitter and sparkling masterpiece.

—— Horatio Clare , Wales Arts Review

Broken Ghost is a bleak, uplifting, angry, magical, heartbreaking book in which people keep on trying to be the best they can be despite a world designed to provoke them otherwise. Griffiths' brilliant novel is by some distance my fiction highlight of 2019.

—— Charlie Connelly , New European, *Books of the Year*

[Broken Ghost is] brim-full of such lovely stuff, though all leavened by an almost biblical anger at the ruptured, fractured state of things, Griffiths balancing such opposing forces in a writing style muscular enough to wrestle you to the ground and leave you panting.

—— National.Cymru

This exceptional debut is not for the faint-hearted… An honest account of an escalating situation and a woman’s bravery in speaking out

—— Woman

As a meditation the trauma of rape, Price’s debut is compelling and thought-provoking… the darker the narrative grows, the more brightly Price’s prose glimmers

—— Hephzibah Anderson , Mail on Sunday

What Red Was introduces an exciting new voice to fiction… Narratives are cleverly interwoven to create a richly textured whole. The writing is polished, wise and possessed of remarkable emotional intelligence. Price is just 26; I cannot wait to see what she produces next

—— Hannah Beckerman , Observer

This debut is incredibly wrought, smartly written and very, very timely… powerful

—— UK Press Syndication

Impressive

—— Patricia Nicol , Sunday Times

Alcoholism, strained friendship and trauma, as well as the power of storytelling, are all sharply expressed

—— Ella Walker , i

Feel the sharp edge of Price’s prose… capturing the horrendously common nature of rape…is Price’s greatest accomplishment

—— Rowan Hisayo Buchanan , Guardian

A scorching and original read... The story of a young girl whose life is torn apart

—— Style Summer Reading, Sunday Times

An exceptionally accomplished debut novel with strongly drawn characters. It is nuanced, true to life and it will make you burn with rage. Price has not shied away from tackling challenging material here: consent, sexual assault, substance abuse, self-harm and depression are just some of the topics that she deftly examines

—— SheerLuxe

Unputdownable... A powerful and haunting tale of friendship, privilege and abuse

—— Independent

This outstanding debut novel explore the aftermath of trauma as well as class, addiction and family dynamics

—— Hannah Beckerman , Sunday Express, *Books of the Year*

What Red Was is an impressively successful debut... if you are looking for a gripping yet thought-provoking read which will have you hooked from the first page, look no further than What Red Was

—— Libby Wright , Palantinte

A gripping tale at once unfamiliar and unmistakably universal

—— BookRiot

A gripping portrait of four young women in South Korea... its focus on the tangled and complicated nature of female friendship is universally familiar and fascinating

—— Refinery 29

Hypnotising... you won't want to put it down until the very last page

—— Harper's Bazaar

You'll find sisterhood at the heart of this ambitious book

—— New York Times Book Review

Tremain's extraordinary imagination has produced a powerful, unsettling novel in which two worlds and cultures collide

—— Cath Kidson Magazine

Tremain writes about this part of France so well because she has known it since childhood, and she captures a sensuality in the landscape that is both attractive and eerie... It is an enthralling book about the catastrophic disruption honesty can bring

—— Siobhan Kane , Irish Times

The novel has all the formal structure of a medieval morality tale, along with its traditional dichotomies: rus and urbe, avarice and asceticism, chastity and lust

—— Guardian

Rose Tremain's thrilling Trespass is set in an obsure valley in Southern France... To be read slowly; Tremain's writing is too exquisite to hurry

—— The Times

Timeless but rooted; tangible but otherworldly. Meticulously plotted, with the musty sadness that comes of cleaving to the past, Trespass will reward your reading time

—— Scotland on Sunday

Rose Tremain's novel begins with a scream and barely loosens its grip amid the sumptuously written pages that follow...subtly harnesses the stifling heat and dangerously feral landscape of southern France to unspool a psychologically disconcerting story of family skeletons and outsider tensions

—— Metro

Like a sinister edition of A Place In the Sun directed by Alfred Hitchcock, with the depth and subtlety that make the book far more than a mere thriller

—— You Magazine (Daily Mail)
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