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Farrar, Straus and Giroux
November 2013
On Sale: November 12, 2013
Featuring: Hild
560 pages ISBN: 0374280878 EAN: 9780374280871 Kindle: B00DA734SA e-Book
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Historical | Women's Fiction Historical
A brilliant, lush, sweeping historical novel about the rise of the most powerful woman of the Middle Ages: Hild Hild is born into a world in transition. In seventh-century Britain, small kingdoms are merging, usually violently. A new religion is coming ashore; the old godsβ priests are worrying. Edwin of Northumbria plots to become overking of the Angles, ruthlessly using every tool at his disposal: blood, bribery, belief. Hild is the kingβs youngest niece. She has the powerful curiosity of a bright child, a will of adamant, and a way of seeing the worldβof studying nature, of matching cause with effect, of observing human nature and predicting what will happen nextβthat can seem uncanny, even supernatural, to those around her. She establishes herself as the kingβs seer. And she is indispensableβuntil she should ever lead the king astray. The stakes are life and death: for Hild, her family, her loved ones, and the increasing numbers who seek the protection of the strange girl who can read the world and see the future. Hild is a young woman at the heart of the violence, subtlety, and mysticism of the early medieval ageβall of it brilliantly and accurately evoked by Nicola Griffithβs luminous prose. Recalling such feats of historical fiction as Hilary Mantelβs Wolf Hall and Sigrid Undsetβs Kristin Lavransdatter, Hild brings a beautiful, brutal worldβand one of its most fascinating, pivotal figures, the girl who would become St. Hilda of Whitbyβto vivid, absorbing life.
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