The Second Sleep
A Novel
From the international bestselling author of Fatherland and Munich, a gripping mystery and a fascinating cautionary tale.
"All civilizations consider themselves invulnerable; history warns us that none is."
1468. A young priest, Christopher Fairfax, arrives in a remote English village to conduct the funeral of his predecessor. The land around is strewn with ancient artefacts—coins, fragments of glass, human bones—which the old parson used to collect. Did his obsession with the past lead to his death?
As Fairfax is drawn more deeply into the isolated community, everything he believes—about himself, his faith and the history of his world—is tested to destruction.
ROBERT HARRIS is the author of sixteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy—Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator—Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep, V2, Act of Oblivion, and Precipice. Several of his books have been adapted into films, including The Ghost. His work has been translated into forty languages and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in West Berkshire with his wife, Gill Hornby.