Sarah Perry’s new novel The Essex Serpent is a celebration of love, and the many different shapes it can take.

The Essex Serpent is a Sunday Times Number One Bestseller, Overall Book of the Year and Fiction Book of the Year at the British Book Awards 2017 (Nibbies), was longlisted for the 2017 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, won the Waterstones Book of the Year 2016 and was shortlisted for the 2016 Costa Novel Award.

For more about the book, click here. 

A young man walks down by the banks of the Blackwater under the full cold moon. He’s been drinking the old year down to the dregs, until his eyes grew sore and his stomach turned, and he was tired of the bright lights and bustle. “I’ll just go down to the water,” he said, and kissed the nearest cheek: “I’ll be back before the chimes.” Now he looks east to the turning tide, out to the estuary slow and dark, and the white gulls gleaming on the waves.

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Categories Fiction International

Tags Book extracts Jonathan Ball Publishers Sarah Perry The Essex Serpent