An electrifying erotic lockdown novel - from 'a writer of show-stopping genius' (Guardian).
You were the last one here, before I closed the door of Burntcoat. Before we all closed our doors.
In the bedroom above her immense studio at Burntcoat, the celebrated sculptor Edith Harkness is making her final preparations. The symptoms are well known: her life will draw to an end in the coming days.
Downstairs, the studio remains lit - a crucible glowing with memories and desire. It was here, when the first lockdown came, that she brought Halit. The lover she barely knew. A presence from another culture. A doorway into a new and even darker world.
'Nobody writes like Sarah Hall, and here her lucid, vital, extraordinary style is matched perfectly to its subject - it's an extraordinary work that will stand as a blazing witness to the age that bore it.' - Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent
'A dark and brilliant novel about love, art and fragility in a time of crisis.' - Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater
'Here are new ways to understand what it feels like to be human. Burntcoat is a masterpiece. I lay myself at the altar of everything Hall writes.' - Daisy Johnson, author of Sisters
About the Author
Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria in 1974. Twice nominated for the Man Booker prize, she is the award-winning author of five novels and two short-story collections - The Beautiful Indifference, which won the Edge Hill and Portico prizes, and Madame Zero, shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize, and winner of the East Anglian Book Award. She is currently the only author to be four times shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award, which she won in 2013 with 'Mrs Fox' and in 2020 with 'The Grotesques'.
Industry Reviews
'Wonderful... Sarah Hall manages to infuse a whole novel with the intensity of one of her stories. The writing has a sense of immediacy - of going down smoking hot onto the page.'
Andrew Miller, author of Pure
'I can think of no other British writer whose talent so consistently thrills, surprises and staggers. Sarah Hall's work has everything: drama, poetry, tension, sensuality, dark magic and that undefinable otherness that is unique to her. She is the best there is ... With Burntcoat she has solidified her status as the literary shining light we lesser souls aspire to.'
Benjamin Myers, author of The Offing
'Sarah Hall makes language shimmer and burn. She's not afraid of big themes and has the talent to back up her ambition, but she's just as good at the intimate and domestic... One of the finest writers at work today.'
Damon Galgut, author of The Promise
