Story of the Forest
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€23.99
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION 2023
'Epic and marvellously entertaining... There's a furious energy to the novel, which constantly moves forward even as it looks sorrowfully back'
FINANCIAL TIMES
'Magnificent... I want to press a copy on everyone I know'
NIGELLA LAWSON
'Epic, magnificent, beautiful... I couldn't put it down'
PHILIPPA PERRY
'Jewel-like clarity... exceptional'
RICHARD COLES
'Exquisite writing [and] a triumphant, elegant ending'
MAIL ON SUNDAY
'An intelligent family saga... ambitious and moving and funny'
TESSA HADLEY
It's 1913 and a young, carefree and recklessly innocent girl, Mina, goes out into the forest on the edge of the Baltic sea and meets a gang of rowdy young men with revolution on their minds. It sounds like a fairy tale but it's life.
The adventure leads to flight, emigration and a new land, a new language and the pursuit of idealism or happiness - in Liverpool. But what of the stories from the old country; how do they shape and form the next generations who have heard the well-worn tales?
From the flour mills of Latvia to Liverpool suburbia to post-war Soho, The Story of the Forest is about myths and memory and about how families adapt in order to survive. It is a story full of the humour and wisdom we have come to relish from this wonderful writer.
Orwell Prize for Political Fiction Award Ceremony - 22 June 2023
Linda Grant is author of four non-fiction books and eight novels. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2000, the Lettre Ulysses Prize for Literary Reportage in 2006 and holds honorary doctorates from the University of York and Liverpool John Moores University. The Clothes on Their Backs was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2008 and went on to win the South Bank Show Award; The Dark Circle was shortlisted for the 2017 Women's Prize for Fiction; A Stranger City won the 2000 Wingate Literary Prize. Linda Grant lives in London.