'George Eliot would be impressed...’ Historical Novel Society
Wiltshire 1860. One year after Darwin’s explosive publication of The Origin of Species, sisters Anna and Beatrice Pentecost awaken to a world shattered by science, radicalism and the stirrings of feminist rebellion.
But society is not the only thing wracked by tumult and torment: Anna’s anomalous love for Lore Ritter and her friendship with the freethinking and ambitious Miriam Sala carry her into areas of uncharted desire, while Beatrice is forced to choose between her beloved Will Anwyl and the evangelist Christian Ritter.
Each is riven by inner contradictions, but who will survive when the sisters fall into a fatal conflict with one another?
‘One of our most consistent and undervalued writers whose unsentimental, quietly revelatory novels have [continually] cropped up on the Booker and Orange shortlists’
The Guardian‘Davies writes with an intensity which is simultaneously disturbing and exhilarating; her prose has a marvellous lyricism’ Times Literary Supplement
‘Davies weaves [an] intricate web of faltering, painful relationships with great skill and writes very powerfully and movingly’ The Independent
Stevie Davies has won numerous awards for her fiction, and has been longlisted for the Booker and Orange Prizes. Several of her books have been adapted into radio and screenplays. Stevie lives in her hometown of Swansea, where she is Professor of Creative Writing at Swansea University. She is a passionate sea-swimmer, cyclist and walker on the Gower. Awakening is her twelfth novel.