From a Costa Book of the Year winner, Booker nominee and double Granta-selected Best Young British novelist comes a searing portrayal of trauma, police abuse and the power of hope.

Teaching nine-year-olds on Zoom. A relationship interrupted by enforced distance. A teenaged son who cannot leave the house. Anna McCormick is already struggling to cope with the unwanted twists 2020 has served up. But when an unstamped envelope arrives overnight, her past begins to cast its own long shadow on the present.

With an uncaring government compounding her woes and a hostile threat drawing closer, Anna must dig deep to keep hope alive for herself and those around her.

This is a twisty, heart-racing page-turner and viscerally rendered portrayal of abuse of power by the state, by the police and by the villains much closer to home.

About the Author
A.L. Kennedy was born in Dundee. and now divides her time between Scotland and the East Midlands. She has won a variety of UK and international book awards, including a Lannan Award, the Costa Prize, the Heinrich Heine Preis, the Somerset Maugham Award and the John Llewellyn Rees Prize. She has twice been included on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list. She has written ten novels, one of which was longlisted for the Booker Prize, six short story collections, three books of non-fiction and three books for children. She also performs occasionally in one-person shows and as a stand-up comic.

Reviews
'Alive in the Merciful Country is an ambitious novel that asks potent questions about abuses of state and personal power ... combines a beadily bleak eye with a standup's comic timing and a profound humanity that breaks open the heart.' -- Guardian
'Prose that soars and swoops like the birds she references ... [Kennedy] spins pain into poetry and its glitter is authentic.' -- The Spectator
'Alive In The Merciful Country asks important questions about the nature of justice and mercy.' -- The Scotsman
'An adventurous, often brilliant novelist ... a wide-reaching, structurally playful novel.' -- Daily Mail
'... provocative, thoughtful and mysterious novel' -- The Observer
'... it's a page turner with all the elegance of literary fiction.' -- Meath Chronicle 2025 books preview



Book Information
ISBN 9781916812284
Author A.L. Kennedy
Format Hardback
Page Count 416
Imprint Saraband / Contraband
Publisher Saraband / Contraband