Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s debut adult novel The Mercies is out now from Pan Macmillan.

After the men in an Arctic Norwegian town are wiped out, the women must survive a sinister threat in this ‘perfectly told’ 1600s parable of ‘a world gone mad’ (Adriana Trigiani).

The Mercies is a story about a love that could prove as dangerous as it is powerful.

Scroll down to listen to an excerpt from the audiobook, read by Jessie Buckley.

Hargrave is an award-winning poet, playwright and children’s novelist. Her bestselling works for children include The Girl of Ink and Stars, and have won numerous awards, including the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, the British Book Awards Children’s Book of the Year and the Blackwell’s Children’s Book of the Year.

‘The Mercies is among the best novels I’ve read in years. In addition to its beautiful writing, its subject matter is both enduring and timely.’ – New York Times Book Review

‘Haunting and beautiful in equal measure, The Mercies is an intimate telling of an essential universal story.’ – Irish Times

‘A gripping novel inspired by a real-life witch hunt. Hargrave’s prose is visceral and immersive; the muddy, cold life and politics of a fishing village leap to vivid life. But her most vital insights are about the human heart: how terrifyingly quickly prejudices can turn into murder, and how desperately we need love and courage to oppose it. Beautiful and chilling.’ – Madeline Miller, author of Circe

About the book 

Winter, 1617. The sea around the remote Norwegian island of Vardø is thrown into a reckless storm. A young woman, Maren, watches as the men of the island, out fishing, perish in an instant. Vardø is now a place of women.

Eighteen months later, a sinister figure arrives. Summoned from Scotland to take control of a place at the edge of the civilised world, Absalom Cornet knows what he needs to do to bring the women of the island to heel. With him travels his young wife, Ursa.

In her new home, and in Maren, Ursa finds something she has never seen before: independent women. But Absalom sees only a place flooded with a terrible evil, one he must root out at all costs …

Listen to the excerpt:

Categories Fiction International

Tags Book excerpts Book extracts Kiran Millwood Hargrave Pan Macmillan SA The Mercies