Sarah Hall

*WINNER OF THE BBC NATIONAL SHORT STORY AWARD 2020*SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDGE HILL SHORT STORY PRIZE 2018 LONGLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2018 WINNER OF THE EAST ANGLIAN BOOK AWARD FOR FICTIONWINNER OF AN O.HENRY PRIZE FOR SHORT FICTION She is running and becoming smaller, running and becoming smaller, running in the light of the reddening sun, the red of her hair and her coat falling, the red of her fur and her body loosening. Running. Holding behind her a sudden, brazen object, white-tipped. Her yellow scarf trails in the briar. All vestiges shed.Sarah Hall is an exquisite chronicler of landscapes - rural, industrial, psychological - and these haunting stories reveal a writer at the peak of her powers. Rich in the mythic symbolism of wilderness and wasteland, these tales blur the natural and urban, mundane and surreal, human and animal. Written in Halls lyrical prose, this uncannily disturbing collection glitters with poetic and erotic imagery. Marked by a fascination with the intimacy of nature - and the nature of intimacy - Madame Zero is a stunning new collection from an author twice nominated for the Booker Prize.

It is 1936 in a remote dale in the old, northern county of Westmorland. For centuries the rural community has remained the same and the Lightburn family have been immersed in the harsh hill-farming tradition - unchanged by the advent of modernity. Then a man from the city of Manchester arrives, spokesman for a vast industrial project which will devastate both the landscape and the local community. Mardale will be flooded to create a new reservoir, supplying water to the Midland cities. In the coming year this corner of Lakeland will be evacuated and transformed.Jack Liggett, the Waterworks representative, further compounds the problems faced by the village as he begins a troubled affair with Janet Lightburn. A woman of force and strength of mind, her natural orthodoxy deeply influences him. Finally, in tragic circumstances, a remarkable, desperate act on Janets part attempts to restore the valley to its former state.Told in luminous prose with an intuitive sense for period and place, Haweswater remembers a rural England that has been disappearing for decades. It is a novel about love, obsession and the destruction of a community, told with grace and artistry by a young storyteller of great imaginative and emotional power.

The Lake Districts answer to The Handmaids Tale.GuardianEngland is in a state of environmental and economic crisis. Under the repressive regime of The Authority, citizens have been herded into urban centres, and all women of child-bearing age fitted with contraceptive devices. A woman known as Sister leaves her oppressive marriage to join an isolated group of women in a remote northern farm at Carhullan, where she intends to become a rebel fighter. But can she follow their notion of freedom and what it means to fight for it?At the vanguard of the new wave of futuristic dystopian literature . . . an accomplished, provocative novel.Literary ReviewHalls fierce and shocking writing captures the cruel beauty of Cumbria.TelegraphA dystopian vision of a disturbingly near future in which the floods have risen and the oil has run out . . . entirely modern and brutally fresh.Independent

On the windswept front of Morecambe Bay, Cy Parks spends his childhood years first in a guest house for consumptives run by his mother and then as apprentice to alcoholic tattoo-artist Eliot Riley. Thirsty for new experiences, he departs for America and finds himself in the riotous world of the Coney Island boardwalk, where he sets up his own business as The Electric Michelangelo. In this carnival environment of roller-coasters and freak-shows, Cy becomes enamoured with Grace, a mysterious immigrant and circus performer who commissions him to cover her entire body in tattooed eyes.Hugely atmospheric, exotic and familiar, The Electric Michelangelo is a love story and an exquisitely rendered portrait of seaside resorts on opposite sides of the Atlantic by one of the most uniquely talented novelists of her generation.

One of the finest writers at work today.Damon GalgutA writer of show-stopping genius.GuardianSo vivid, so visceral, so vital. Val McDermidFor almost a decade Rachel Caine has turned her back on home and worked in Idaho at a reservation for wolves. As one of the few experts in her field she is summoned back to England by the eccentric Earl of Annerdale to help with his plan for re-wilding wolves on his estate in the Lake District. As Rachel attempts a gradual reconciliation with her estranged family, her work with the Earl begins to generate public outrage and the threat of sabotage. Set against a backdrop of Scottish independence and tumultuous power struggles both locally and nationally, The Wolf Border is a novel steeped in wilderness and wildness, both animal and human.A graceful, visceral, utterly compelling read.Sunday Express magazineA thrilling tale of politics and power . . . Compulsively absorbing and masterfully plotted, it confirms Hall as one of our finest fiction writers.Daily MailA compelling, psychological drama . . . [Hall] has a golden touch.The Economist

An electrifying story of passion, connection and transformation from a writer of show-stopping geniusGuardian.Dark and brilliant.SARAH MOSSA masterpiece.DAISY JOHNSONExtraordinary.SARAH PERRYSearing . . . Sarah Halls best work yet. JON McGREGOROne of the best books of the year. TELEGRAPHHall has set a bar . . . Finely wrought, intellectually brave and emotionally honest.THE SCOTSMANIn the bedroom above her immense studio at Burntcoat, the celebrated sculptor Edith Harkness is making her final preparations. The symptoms are well known: her life will draw to an end in the coming days.Downstairs, the studio is a crucible glowing with memories and desire. It was here, when the first lockdown came, that she brought Halit. The lover she barely knew. A presence from another culture. A doorway into a new and feverish world.Sarah Hall makes language shimmer and burn . . . One of the finest writers at work today.DAMON GALGUTWonderful . . . The writing goes down smoking hot onto the page.ANDREW MILLERTransporting . . . A beautiful novel, full of heat and darkness.AVNI DOSHII can think of no other British writer whose talent so consistently thrills, surprises and staggers . . . With Burntcoat she has solidified her status as the literary shining light we lesser souls aspire to. BENJAMIN MYERS

*WINNER OF THE BBC NATIONAL SHORT STORY AWARD 2020*SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDGE HILL SHORT STORY PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES TAIT BLACK MEMORIAL PRIZEA Guardian, Financial Times and Irish Times Book of the YearThe queen of dark short fiction.GuardianAstonishing, miraculous, a gift. Daisy JohnsonThe best short story writer in Britain.SpectatorIn Turkish forests or rain-drenched Cumbrian villages, characters walk, drive, dream and fly, trying to reconcile themselves with their journey through life and death. Radical, charged with a transformative, elemental power, each of these stories invites us to stand at the very edge of our possible selves.Includes the story The Grotesques, winner of the BBC Short Story Award, 2020.

Italy in the early 1960s: a dying painter considers the sacrifices and losses that have made him an enigma, both to strangers and those closest to him. He begins his last life painting, using the same objects he has painted obsessively for his entire career - a small group of bottles. In Cumbria 30 years later, a landscape artist - and admirer of the Italian recluse - finds himself trapped in the extreme terrain that has made him famous. And in present-day London, his daughter, an art curator struggling with the sudden loss of her twin brother while trying to curate an exhibition about the lives of the twentieth-century European masters, is drawn into a world of darkness and sexual abandon. Covering half a century, this is a luminous and searching novel, and Halls most accomplished work to date.

Fierce and sensuous.GuardianExquisitely crafted.Sunday TelegraphAstonishing . . . A writer of rare vision and talent.Sunday TimesFrom the speed and heat of summer London, to the heathered fells and lowlands of Cumbria with their history of smouldering violence, to an eerily still lake in the Finnish wilderness, Sarah Hall evokes landscapes with extraordinary precision and grace.The characters within these territories are real-life survivors, but whether its a frustrated housewife seeking extreme experience or a young woman contemplating the death of her lover, dark devices and desires rise to the surface. And the human body, too - flawed, visceral, and full of emotional conflict - provides a sensuous frame for each unfolding drama.Uniquely disturbing and deeply erotic, this collection confirms Sarah Hall as one of the greatest writers of her generation.

She turns her head and smiles. Something is wrong with her face. The bones have been recarved. Her lips are thin and her nose is a dark blade. Teeth small and yellow. The lashes of her hazel eyes have thickened and her brows are drawn together, an expression he has never seen, a look that is almost craven.Mrs Fox is the story of a husband who is shocked out of his complacency when his wife undergoes a remarkable transformation. "The poetic use of language, the dexterity and originality of the prose made Sarah Halls Mrs Fox utterly unique," Mariella Frostrup

Sex and death are two of the most powerful, exhilarating and terrifying forces that define and shape the human experience.In this provocative and haunting collection of short stories edited by two masters of the form, some of todays most compelling writers from around the globe - including Kevin Barry, Yiyun Li, Ben Marcus, Jon McGregor, Taiye Selasi and Ali Smith - explore these challenging themes with honesty, empathy and psychological acuity, in stories that are utterly dazzling.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. Walking ahead of him on the heath, his wife turns to look at him over her shoulder, Topaz eyes glinting. Scorched face. Vixen.In language harvested from nature, Sarah Hall tells a story of metamorphosis, of wildness and fecundity, and of a man reaching for reason, who cannot let go of the creature he loves.

¿En qué nos parecemos a los lobos? Rachel Caine lleva diez años estudiando y protegiendo las manadas de lobos en una reserva india de Idaho, una labor absorbente que limita su vida personal a escasas amistades y a relaciones esporadicas. Todo va a cambiar cuando recibe una interesante oferta de uno de los hombres mas ricos del Reino Unido, el duque de Annerdale; un excentrico aristocrata de Cumbria, tierra natal de Rachel, que pretende reintroducir el lobo gris en los campos britanicos.Es el proyecto mas ambicioso y atractivo al que se ha enfrentado, aunque el regreso a Cumbria supondra para Rachel el reencuentro con una madre problematica y excentrica, que ha condicionado la historia de su particular familia, asi como implicarse, mas alla de lo previsible, en el cuidado de la vida salvaje en la reserva y de la vida inesperada que se va abriendo paso en su interior. La vuelta de los lobos despierta en la region temores atavicos, viejos mitos y arcaicas supersticiones que se traducen en protestas y presiones, sobre el trasfondo de un marco politico convulso por el proceso de independencia de la vecina Escocia.En "La frontera del lobo", Sarah Hall, considerada por la revista "Granta" como una de las mejores voces de la literatura inglesa del momento, describe con una inusual belleza la vida y el comportamiento de los lobos, asi como el espectacular paisaje que los rodea, convertido en espejo de nuestra propia naturaleza interior, de los lazos que se rompen y se asientan, de nuestras identidades reales o imaginarias... Una alegoria que indaga, mientras el lector avanza con paso seguro en el relato, en la complejidad de la existencia, tanto animal como humana, y en el limite difuso entre la vida salvaje y la civilizacion, dentro y fuera de cada uno de nosotros.Hall evoca sus paisajes con una prosa viva y cautivadora. Una novela con estilo, inteligente y muy amena; de una gran belleza.The Sunday Times¿En qué nos parecemos a los lobos? Rachel Caine lleva diez años estudiando y protegiendo las manadas de lobos en una reserva india de Idaho, una labor absorbente que limita su vida personal a escasas amistades y a relaciones esporadicas. Todo va a cambiar cuando recibe una interesante oferta de uno de los hombres mas ricos del Reino Unido, el duque de Annerdale; un excentrico aristocrata de Cumbria, tierra natal de Rachel, que pretende reintroducir el lobo gris en los campos britanicos.Es el proyecto mas ambicioso y atractivo al que se ha enfrentado, aunque el regreso a Cumbria supondra para Rachel el reencuentro con una madre problematica y excentrica, que ha condicionado la historia de su particular familia, asi como implicarse, mas alla de lo previsible, en el cuidado de la vida salvaje en la reserva y de la vida inesperada que se va abriendo paso en su interior. La vuelta de los lobos despierta en la region temores atavicos, viejos mitos y arcaicas supersticiones que se traducen en protestas y presiones, sobre el trasfondo de un marco politico convulso por el proceso de independencia de la vecina Escocia.En "La frontera del lobo", Sarah Hall, considerada por la revista "Granta" como una de las mejores voces de la literatura inglesa del momento, describe con una inusual belleza la vida y el comportamiento de los lobos, asi como el espectacular paisaje que los rodea, convertido en espejo de nuestra propia naturaleza interior, de los lazos que se rompen y se asientan, de nuestras identidades reales o imaginarias... Una alegoria que indaga, mientras el lector avanza con paso seguro en el relato, en la complejidad de la existencia, tanto animal como humana, y en el limite difuso entre la vida salvaje y la civilizacion, dentro y fuera de cada uno de nosotros.Hall evoca sus paisajes con una prosa viva y cautivadora. Una novela con estilo, inteligente y muy amena; de una gran belleza.The Sunday Times

The world has changed. War rages in South America and China, and Britain - now entirely dependent on the US for food and energy - is run by an omnipresent dictatorship known simply as The Authority. Assets and weapons have been seized, and women are compulsorily fitted with contraceptive devices. This is Sister''s story of her attempt to escape the repressive regime - from the confines of her Lancaster prison cell she tells of her search for The Carhullan Army, a quasi-mythical commune of ''unofficial'' women rumoured to be living in a remote part of Cumbria.

" La vida está en los detalles, y Hall los registra magistralmente. " Times Literary Supplement" La carga erótica de la prosa de Hall y su violenta fuerza física coexisten con la sensación de aislamiento de sus personajes: cada uno es un mundo en si mismo, que guarda su profundidad y su misterio. " The GuardianDe los acantilados y las llanuras cubiertas de brezo de Cumbria con su historia de ardiente violencia, a la velocidad y el calor del verano en Londres, pasando por un lago misteriosamente tranquilo en los bosques de Finlandia, Sarah Hall evoca los paisajes con asombrosa precision y elegancia. Paisajes en ocasiones inquietantes que perfilan unos relatos que siempre habitan en el territorio entre lo natural y lo urbano, lo prosaico y lo surrealista, lo humano y lo animal; entre la intimidad de la naturaleza y la naturaleza de la intimidad. Sus personajes, ya se trate de un ama de casa frustrada que busca un encuentro apasionante, de una joven que contempla la muerte de su novio o de las fobias de una niña, son verdaderos supervivientes azotados entre oscuras pasiones y deseos que afloran a la superficie: el cuerpo humano, entre conflictos emocionales, proporciona el marco sensual de cada drama.Los relatos agrupados bajo el titulo" Madame Zero y la hermosa indiferencia" fueron publicados ...

For almost a decade Rachel Caine has turned her back on home, kept distant by family disputes and her work monitoring wolves on an Idaho reservation. But now, summoned by the eccentric Earl of Annerdale and his controversial scheme to reintroduce the Grey Wolf to the English countryside, she is back in the peat and wet light of the Lake District. The earls project harks back to an ancient idyll of untamed British wilderness - though Rachel must contend with modern-day concessions to health and safety, public outrage and political gain - and the return of the Grey after hundreds of years coincides with her own regeneration: impending motherhood, and reconciliation with her estranged family. The Wolf Border investigates the fundamental nature of wilderness and wildness, both animal and human. It seeks to understand the most obsessive aspects of humanity: sex, love, and conflict; the desire to find answers to the question of our existence; those complex systems that govern the most superior creature on earth.

Quienes cuentan historias sobreviven, le dijo su madre a la protagonista un día que desapareció varias horas y la dejó sola en la casa de los páramos. Las historias dan sentido a un mundo desordenado, y Edith aprende a lidiar desde pequeña -a su pesar- con la arbitrariedad y la incertidumbre, con el caos de la mente de su madre, una escritora amnesica. Aprende tambien a trabajar la madera, a quemarla para volverla mas resistente, segun una ancestral tecnica japonesa. Cuando llega la crisis, el abismo que se abre en el centro y lo devora todo, se recluye con su amante, pensandose a salvo en ese estudio aislado junto al rio, y los primeros dias del encierro tienen la intensidad de un sueño.Sarah Hall, una de las mejores novelistas jovenes del Reino Unido segun la revista "Granta", ha ganado en dos ocasiones el Premio Portico, y tambien ha sido galardonada con el Premio Betty Trask, el Premio Commonwealth a la primera novela, el Premio BBC de relato, el Premio John Llewellyn Rhys, el Premio E. M. Forster...Madera quemada, su sexta novela, es la historia de un amor confinado, una experiencia sublime y abrasadora, una elegia que ningun lector olvidara.Quienes cuentan historias sobreviven, le dijo su madre a la protagonista un día que desapareció varias horas y la dejó sola en la casa de los páramos. Las historias dan sentido a un mundo desordenado, y Edith aprende a lidiar desde pequeña -a su pesar- con la arbitrariedad y la incertidumbre, con el caos de la mente de su madre, una escritora amnesica. Aprende tambien a trabajar la madera, a quemarla para volverla mas resistente, segun una ancestral tecnica japonesa. Cuando llega la crisis, el abismo que se abre en el centro y lo devora todo, se recluye con su amante, pensandose a salvo en ese estudio aislado junto al rio, y los primeros dias del encierro tienen la intensidad de un sueño.Sarah Hall, una de las mejores novelistas jovenes del Reino Unido segun la revista "Granta", ha ganado en dos ocasiones el Premio Portico, y tambien ha sido galardonada con el Premio Betty Trask, el Premio Commonwealth a la primera novela, el Premio BBC de relato, el Premio John Llewellyn Rhys, el Premio E. M. Forster...Madera quemada, su sexta novela, es la historia de un amor confinado, una experiencia sublime y abrasadora, una elegia que ningun lector olvidara."Una novela rebosante de belleza, fuego y oscuridad, sobre el arte, el sexo, el cuidado y la muerte." Avni Doshi"Nadie escribe como Sarah Hall, y aqui su estilo lucido yvital casa perfectamente con el tema elegido: es un libro extraordinario que ofrece un testimonio implacable de la era en que vivimos." Sarah Perry"Una novela sombria y brillante sobre el amor, el arte y lafragilidad en tiempos inciertos." Sarah Moss"He aqui un nuevo modo de comprender lo que significa ser humano. Una obra maestra." Daisy Johnson"Feroz y lirica... Cautivadora." Sunday Times"El arte como una forma de supervivencia, la resiliencia del espiritu humano en el umbral de la destruccion del cuerpo. Una exquisita cronica de la intimidad sexual, del amor de una madre, de nuestra aterradora capacidad de resistir y nuestro compromiso de crear belleza a partir de la oscuridad." Irish Independent"Una erotica y tragica elegia, con el poder de hechizar al lector." The Herald"Una novela febril y detallada sobre la enfermedad, el amor y la perd...

You were the last one here, before I closed the door of Burntcoat. Before we all closed our doors. In the bedroom above her immense studio at Burntcoat, the celebrated sculptor Edith Harkness is ma

Walking ahead of him on the heath, his wife turns to look at him over her shoulder, 'Topaz eyes glinting. Scorched face. Vixen.'In language harvested from nature, Sarah Hall tells a story of metamorphosis, of wildness and fecundity, and of a man reaching for reason, who cannot let go of the creature he loves.