Hemispheres

Description

Growing up in a family of pub landlords, Danny spends his youth in Thatcher's Britain in the company of angry, disaffected men. His father, Yan, has not returned from the Falklands War, and Danny and his mother have no idea whether he is dead or has deserted. But Yan is very much alive: half a world away, on another rugged coast, a drunken game of poker sets him and a rag-tag band of deserters off on a punishing journey across the southern hemisphere. Years later, Yan returns - whip-thin, weathered, and, he maintains, dying of cancer. For all his conflicted emotions, Danny is unable to walk away from the answers Yan can give him, from a last chance to understand his father and to say a final goodbye. Yan relates his story of migration in the patterned language of their shared passion for birding; the whirling of gulls and guillemots, ravens and herons, nightjars and lapwings. Hemispheres is a gloriously ambitious debut novel of family, destiny, nature and coming home. 'Steve Baker never chooses a cliche. He makes everything new. And he asks of his reader the same kind of attention, agility and adoration of words and their power that he displays on every page of this remarkable debut novel. Baker really respects his reader, and should be widely read, and respected, for that.' - Philip Gwyn Jones (Publishing Director, Granta) 'What a beautiful, original and intelligent novel. One of the best I've read in a long time.' - Lee Brackstone (Faber and Faber)

Stephen Baker was born in Stockton-on-Tees in 1969, and now lives in Derbyshire. This is his first novel.