The Solitude of Thomas Cave - Tapa dura

'A bewitching ghost story, beautifully told. The Solitude of Thomas Cave is written with the clarity of poetry, and the simple weight of a parable. I loved this book.' Katie Hickman, author of Daughters of Brittania 'A masterful evocation of the far north.' Magnus Mills 'Many thanks for sending me Georgina Harding's THE SOLITUDE OF THOMAS CAVE. I read it almost at one sitting and thought it was an astonishing and risk-taking piece of imaginative writing. Her language is superb - evocative and poetic. She conjures up a mysterious and haunting world that lingers in the imagination. I'm sure it will find numerous admirers.' Charles Palliser

It is August, 1616. The whaling ship Heartsease has ventured high into the Arctic, but the crew must return home before the ice closes in. All, that is, save Thomas Cave. He makes a wager that he will remain there alone until the next season, though no man has yet been known to have survived a winter this far north. So he is left with provisions, shelter, and a journal - should he not live to tell the tale. As the light recedes, so begins Cave's lonely contest with the realities and the phantasms of the Arctic winter. He is vulnerable to blizzards, avalanches, bears - and his own demons: his fear, his apathy, his superstition and his memory. For in this wilderness that is without human history his own past returns to him: the woman he had loved, the grief that drove him north. Beautiful, strange and haunting, The Solitude of Thomas Cave is an unforgettable first novel.