The Western Wind

The Western Wind has been singled out by the Guardian in a preview of “best fiction in 2018” and the books editor at The Bookseller chose it as her book of the year, the book that deserves to break out Harvey to a wider audience Harvey has been praised by Michael Cunningham, Tessa Hadley, and AM Holmes; James Wood raved about Dear Thief in the New Yorker , where he called Harvey’s prose “luminous” and “rich but always lucid” and said that he “was at moments reminded of Marilynne Robinson” Dear Thief was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize and longlisted for the Bailey’s Prize for Women’s Fiction Harvey’s 2009 debut The Wilderness won the Betty Trask Prize; it was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, the Guardian First Book Award, and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Harvey has a postgraduate degree in philosophy and her insightful, contemplative approach to story has earned her comparisons to Virginia Woolf, Marilynne Robinson, WG Sebald, Claire Messud, John Banville, and Joseph O’Neill The Western Wind is both a propulsive medieval mystery and a meditation on faith and existence that will appeal to readers of Eleanor Catton, Sarah Waters, and Donna Tartt Set in 1491, the year Henry VIII was born, Harvey places the plot in the run-up to Lent, and tells it through the voice of a village priest and confessor; the novel subtly foreshadows the events of the English Reformation, which would take place approximately within the next four decades Harvey teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University in the UK; she was a member of the jury for the 2016 Giller Prize Her stories have appeared in Granta and on BBC Radio4