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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
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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 godsโ 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 kingโs youngest niece. She has the powerful curiosity of a bright child, a will of adamant, and a way of seeing the worldโof studying nature, of matching cause with effect, of observing human nature and predicting what will happen nextโthat can seem uncanny, even supernatural, to those around her. She establishes herself as the kingโs seer. And she is indispensableโuntil 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 ageโall of it brilliantly and accurately evoked by Nicola Griffithโs luminous prose. Recalling such feats of historical fiction as Hilary Mantelโs Wolf Hall and Sigrid Undsetโs Kristin Lavransdatter, Hild brings a beautiful, brutal worldโand one of its most fascinating, pivotal figures, the girl who would become St. Hilda of Whitbyโto vivid, absorbing life.
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