WINNER OF THE GILLER PRIZE 2024 SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024 **The international
bestseller** **A Guardian Book of the Year** **Chosen as a book of the year by the
independent.co.uk** 'Her prose is a thing of wonder' TELEGRAPH 'Michaels's writing
continues to stand head and shoulders above most other fiction' OBSERVER 'Through luminous
moments of chance change and even grace Michaels shows us our humanity' MARGARET ATWOOD
'Michaels is exceptionally open to beauty' GUARDIAN The triumphant new novel from the author
of the Orange Prize-winning Fugitive Pieces : a soaring and luminous story of chance and change
_________________________________________________ 1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut
John lies in the aftermath of a blast unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his
thoughts he is lost to memory - a chance encounter in a pub by a railway a hot bath with his
lover on a winter night his childhood on a faraway coast - as the snow falls. 1920. John has
returned from war to North Yorkshire near another river - alive but not still whole. Reunited
with Helena an artist he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living.
But the past erupts insistently into the present as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures:
ghosts whose messages he cannot understand . So begins a narrative that spans four
generations moments of connection and consequence igniting and re-igniting as the century
unfolds. In luminous moments of desire comprehension longing transcendence the sparks fly
upward working their transformations decades later. Held is a novel like no other by a
writer at the height of her powers: affecting and intensely beautiful full of mystery wisdom
and compassion. 'I am blown away by the scale beauty weave and thinking of this book ... It
dances with words time and ideas in a way that seems to reinvent everything I know about the
novel' RACHEL JOYCE
