Alive in the Merciful Country

From a Costa Book of the Year winner, Booker nominee and double Granta-selected Best Young British novelist comes a searing portrayal of the gradual uncovering of one woman's past psychological wounds, set in motion by the arrival of an unexpected letter.

In the 1980s, Anna McCormick was an anti-nuclear peace activist. She was used to taking on those abusing their political power, but when she was targeted by abuse herself, it left a wound so deep it would still be reverberating through her life decades later.

In 2020, Anna is teaching nine-year-olds on Zoom, navigating a relationship interrupted by enforced distance, and coping with a teenaged son who cannot leave the house. When an unstamped envelope arrives overnight, the traumatic past she had tried to bury begins to cast its own long shadow on the present.

This is a twisty, heart-racing page-turner and an incisive look at the personal impact of the violence of the state, the police and the villains much closer to home.