Cold Earth: A Novel

Description

A team of six archaeologists from the United States, England, and Scotland assembles at the beginning of the Arctic summer to unearth traces of the lost Viking settlements in Greenland. But as they sink into uneasy domesticity, there is news of an epidemic back home, and their communications with the outside world fall away. Facing a Greenland winter for which they are hopelessly ill-equipped, Nina, Ruth, Catriona, Jim, Ben, and Yianni, knowing that their missives may never reach their loved ones, write final letters home. These letters make up the narrative of Cold Earth, with each section of the book composed of one character's first-person perspective in letter form. In this exceptional and haunting debut novel, Moss weaves a rich tapestry of personal narrative, history, love, grief, and naked survival. Cold Earth is both a heart-pounding thriller and a highly sophisticated novel of ideas.

Sarah Moss is a novelist, travel writer and academic. She teaches Creative Writing in the English Department at University College Dublin and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Moss has written seven novels, Ghost Wall, The Tidal Zone, Signs for Lost Children, Bodies of Light, Night Waking, and Cold Earth. Ghost Wall was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Polari Prize, and longlisted for the Women's Prize, and The Tidal Zone, Signs for Lost Children, and Bodies of Light were shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize, in 2017, 2016 and 2015 respectively.

Praise for Cold Earth "I'm not one for thrillers . . but Cold Earth had too many good ingredients to pass up . . . Moss draws six unforgettable individuals, through their interactions with fellow archeologists and through letters home to their loved ones. Bugs in amber, carbon in ice-a reader watches their existence constrict to survival." -Los Angeles Times "In stripped-down prose that never reveals too much, first-novelist Moss conjures an increasingly creepy atmosphere, the isolation and stark beauty of the Greenland coast, and the rigors of survival in a harsh environment." -Booklist Praise for the U.K. edition of Cold Earth "It is almost perfect . . . This is an unusually promising first novel." -Times Literary Supplement (London) "Few first novels are as topical as this . . . There is a lot to enjoy." -Financial Times (London) "Moss's stark writing delivers stinging splashes of cold water. Every element is distilled for purity of purpose." -The Times (London) "A heart-tingling story." -Metro (London) "One of the most powerful and gripping debut novels I have ever read." -Scarlett Thomas, author of The End of Mr. Y "An astounding piece of imaginative fiction taking the reader to the ends of the earth." -Bookseller (London)