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Ness

UK Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
US Publisher: W W Norton

Eerie, unsettling and hauntingly beautiful – a new collaboration from the bestselling creators of Holloway

Somewhere on a salt-and-shingle island, inside a ruined concrete structure known as The Green Chapel, a figure called The Armourer is leading a ritual with terrible intent.

But something is coming to stop him.

Five more-than-human forms are traversing land, sea and time towards The Green Chapel, moving to the point where they will converge and become Ness. Ness has lichen skin and willow-bones. Ness is made of tidal drift, green moss and deep time. Ness has hagstones for eyes and speaks only in birds. And Ness has come to take this island back.

What happens when land comes to life? What would it take for land to need to come to life? Using word and image, Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood have together made a minor modern myth. Part-novella, part-prose-poem, part-mystery play, in Ness their skills combine to dazzling, troubling effect.

Robert Macfarlane is a best-selling, multi-award-winning author who is internationally renowned for his writing on nature, people and place. His...
Stanley Donwood is an artist and writer. He has worked with Radiohead since 1994. His evocative and haunting imagery has...