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  • Published: 1 May 2012
  • ISBN: 9780552778770
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $24.99

In Desolate Heaven



A brilliant, atmospheric novel about the emotional aftermath of the First World War.

Autumn 1919. Elizabeth Mortlake, companion to her widowed sister-in-law, meets Jameson and Hunter, two ex-officers striving for some new measure of peace and order amid the ever-lengthening shadows of the war - one still hospitalized and awaiting the judgement of a court martial, the other seeking a more personal atonement for his unimaginable sins. Drawn increasingly into their lives here at the calm centre of the changing world, she gradually understands what a fragile peace they now inhabit, and how the ideals and bonds which once sustained and kept the two men alive, now threaten to destroy them completely.

  • Published: 1 May 2012
  • ISBN: 9780552778770
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $24.99

About the author

Robert Edric

Robert Edric was born in 1956. His novels include Winter Garden (James Tait Black Prize winner 1986), A New Ice Age (runner-up for the Guardian Fiction Prize 1986), The Book of the Heathen (winner of the WH Smith LIterary Award 2000), Peacetime (longlisted for the Booker Prize 2002), Gathering the Water (longlisted for the Booker Prize 2006) and In Zodiac Light (shortlisted for the Dublin Impac Prize 2010). His most recent novel is Sanctuary. He lives in Yorkshire.

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Praise for In Desolate Heaven

Edric writes a spare craggy prose . . . makes much contemporary fiction that concentrates on the urban wastes of today seem self-indulgent, sentimental and frivolous

Allan Massie, Scotsman

'It is extraordinary that Robert Edric's fiction isn't more widely acclaimed...true to its title this is a work of bleak accomplishment'

The Sunday Times

'The agony, the despair and the madness of war, with its troubled aftermath, emerge with a fierceness and starkness...a fine achievement, not swiftly forgotten'

Scotland on Sunday

'Like one of those dreams where you can come awake, and then fall asleep and continue where you left off'

The Times

'I would defy anyone not to sit down and read to the end'

Literary Review