He is brought home barely alive, and scarred by what he has seen of his army's chaotic retreat and an atrocity he witnessed in a Spanish village.

Well, it's almost as if Mr Miller was afeared that all these delights would not suffice, so he tacked on a thrilling if highly implausible persecution of Our Hero that made it impossible NOT to keep turning those pages until. Now We Shall Be Entirely Free, which opens in 1809, records the aftermath of Napoleon’s rout of the British in northern Spain.It won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for the best foreign novel published in Italy. I’m not going to give away too much of the plot (no more than if you were to read the jacket flap) as I believe the reader will find pleasure in experiencing Miller’s story on their own. And once more it came to him, the thought that had touched him several times since coming back from Spain, that we are not private beings and cannot hide things inside ourselves. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian View image in fullscreen ‘Eyes open, heart open, feet on the ground’: Andrew Miller. A novel that would not feel out of place in the collected work of Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter Scott or, indeed, alongside William Golding's To the Ends of the Earth trilogy.

I would want you to come at this book, if you decide to put it on your TBR list, with the knowledge that it has received favorable reviews (see below for some links), and then take it from there and read away. By contrast, as Lacroix travels through Britain he finds himself exposed to muggers, swindlers and thieves. According to this article at the Guardian, when asked what it meant to be a novelist Andrew Miller replied:“Eyes open, heart open, feet on the ground. A curious and compelling story, that questions how people are to navigate through turbulent emotions following a traumatic experiences, grief and self reproach - to then find a sense of direction in their lives.

I don’t feel the need to fact-check novels, whether set contemporaneously or in the early nineteenth century. Historical fiction should have something to say about the present, and this does, yes, for in our age there are still atrocities that take place under the cover of war and shouldn't the perpetrators be held accountable? Both the Hebridean setting and the idea of an innocent man being chased by people he doesn’t know may even remind readers of “The Thirty-Nine Steps,” John Buchan’s classic adventure novel. From the opening paragraphs the reader is informed that the setting is 1809, more than two centuries ago.

Add in an interesting excursion into the development of surgery and hygiene, and, (my personal highlight) a mention of Mingulay, a place filled for me with happy memories of fulmars, kittiwakes, razorbills and puffins, oh, and some people too, although the island was abandoned in 1912. Now We Shall Be Entirely Free is a historical novel, but it is also many other things - a war novel, a romance, an adventure story, a cat and mouse chase, a story of friendship. In the course of his journey, Lacroix experiences both the best and worst of humanity, experiencing violence but also the kindness of strangers.Miller's prose is stunning, and I found the story completely absorbing - the descriptions of Glasgow in the 1800s were some of the most striking for me. Die Handlung spielt 1809, zur Zeit der Napoleonischen Kriege, und der Krieg an sich und was er aus dem Menschen macht, ist das zentrale Thema. The linear design of the novel gives it a lot of forward momentum, but not so much that you want to rush through Miller’s wonderful prose, which is resonant without ever being florid or overly ornamental. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.