Harvest

Masterly in its firm grip on what need only be intimated and what stated cleanly. It was easily the best-written novel of the year. -- Philip Hensher, Books of the Year * Spectator *
‘Few novels as fine or as complex in their apparent simplicity will be published this, or indeed any, year.’ Irish Times
‘Jim Crace is the most generous of writers . . . Harvest is one of his best novels ever. He is, quite simply, one of the great writers of our time.’ Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin
‘This very beautifully written novel gives pause for thought and unearths a quintessential England, never stereotyped, which is also deeply and humanly unique . . . Crace’s most satisfying, and probably, best book.’ Scotsman
‘A magician among British novelists . . . Crace’s 11th novel is a glory to read, as the intensely poetic prose is brought to a burnished pitch throughout.’ Evening Standard
'Inimitably excellent, Jim Crace stands on his own ground among living English novelists . . . No recent English novel has deeper roots, yet casts so broad a shade.' Independent
‘Terrible, lyrical, beauty that is nothing like any other novel I have ever read . . . Crace achieves a cadence of speech which sounds and feels as if it is absolutely authentic.’ Spectator
‘Jim Crace is a Titan of the modern English novel . . . Beautifully detailed.’ Irish Examiner
‘The feel for landscape, and how man relates to it, is the crowning achievement of this fine novel. Crace’s precision of language, his mastery of his themes, the fullness of his imagination and his fastidiously well-made sentences offer abundant satisfactions.’Times Literary Supplement
‘Harvest can be read in mythical, even biblical terms, but the physical and emotional displacement of individuals and communities at its heart remains as politically resonant today as it was at the time.’ Guardian
'Unfolding in Crace's trademark rhythmic prose and brimming with unsentimental but intense feeling for the natural landscape, this lingering novel is as resonant as it is elusive.' Daily Mail
‘Crace’s prose - percussive, rhythmic, resonant - is unmistakable.’ Independent on Sunday
‘Crace's stunning depiction of country life in all its hardship - less Tolstoy, more Hardy, but bleak-pastoral rather than idyllic-bucolic . . . Harvest is a mesmerising slow-burner of a novel.’ Literary Review
'The best of his that I've read. . . Full of the most wonderful descriptions . . . Very readable and very scary . . . A tour de force.' Gillian Slovo, Saturday Review on BBC Radio 4
‘Involving and mysterious, stoked by vividly descriptive prose that’s never wastefully or showily verbose.’ Scotland on Sunday
‘Harvest is as finely written as it is tautly structured. . . Magnificently resurrecting a pivotal moment in our history about which it is deeply knowledgeable.’ Sunday Times
‘Jim Crace’s setting is closely imagined in a detailed, credible, tactile way that makes it seem real.’ The Times
‘Beautifully written, alive with the author’s love of landscape and language, this is a book to savour.’ Choice Magazine
‘Masterly, elegiac novel about an 18th-century village under threat.’ Sunday Times Culture
‘This is a novel of beautiful writing and careful structure . . . Crace has a great gift for clarity, his prose precise and heartfelt, achieving a timeless, polished quality.’ Daily Telegraph
‘A spellbinding writer.’ Saga
‘Has a timeless quality that gives the central themes a continuing relevance, as immigration policy moves up the political agenda . . . Extraordinarily metrical prose whose cadences echo across the centuries.’ Sunday Herald
‘Each of [Crace's] 11 finely crafted novels fashions a unique climate, landscape and mood, a far cry from everyday realism though nothing to do with soppy or silly fantasy . . . The latest, set in an isolated English village at some unspecified point in the pre-industrial past, is no exception.’ Week
'For Christmas I hope for Harvest, the last novel of that fine and unsparing writer Jim Crace.' -- Colin Thubron, Books of the Year * Observer *
'A spare, haunting book . . . one to savour.' -- Books of the Year * Financial Times *
There are three novels I've pressed most enthusiastically on people this year. Jim Crace's Booker-shortlisted Harvest, about land enclosure and dispossession, transports the reader into a past that feels more present than the world outside, yet also sheds an uneasy light on today. -- Best Fiction of 2013 * Guardian *
The most accomplished novelists can illuminate the present while making their chosen past live, move and talk . . . This intensely local story becomes, by the rhythmic majesty and fervour of its writing, a universal one. -- Boyd Tonkin, Books of the Year * Independent *
Beautifully written . . . an early front-runner for this year's Man Booker -- Best Books of 2013 * Sunday Times *
Two novels this year stretched the bounds of historical fiction and were great page-turners too; Kate Atkinson's Life After Life and Jim Crace's Harvest . . . [Harvest] has something of the same dreamlike power, a story with an almost brutally simple arc that is also lyrical and thought-provoking -- Books of the Year * Evening Standard *
Harvest, apparently Jim Crace's farewell to novelism, has [an] elusive quality. Set in a remote farming community that goes to hell in a handcart with the advent of land enclosures, it aspires to the unsettling self-assurance of a William Golding novel without ever quite cashing the cheque that its attitude promises. -- Books of the Year * Daily Telegraph *