God's Own Country

Description

'Excellent, extremely entertaining, utterly compelling, wonderfully unique' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH There isn't a person left in the valley who hasn't turned against Sam Marsdyke. Under the brooding eye of his father he spends his days alone on the moors tending sheep, watching wide-eyed ramblers march past and 'towns' move in, turning farms into second homes. Then a new family arrives, eager for 'welly weekends and a postcard view out the bedroom window', and Marsdyke catches sight of their young daughter. What begins as an unlikely friendship turns into something altogether more unnerving. Brilliantly comic and deeply unsettling. God's Own Country traces a journey across the Yorkshire landscape and into the mind of one of the most unforgettable characters in recent fiction. 'Remarkable, compelling, very funny and very distrubing . . . like no other character in contemporay fiction' SUNDAY TIMES

Ross Raisin was born in Yorkshire in 1979, near Bradford and Ilkley. He studied English at King's College in London and worked for a time as co-manager of a wine bar. He studied for an MA in Creative Writing at Goldsmith's University in London before his debut novel, God's Own Country, was bought in a hotly-contested auction by Viking Penguin. It was published to great critical acclaim in 2008 and Ross was shortlisted for 8 separate awards for the book, winning the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2009. He lives in London.