Books and Book reading – Harvest by Jim Crace

With the arrival of late summer steals and the gleaning of the final pearls of barley, a village is threatened. The arrival of three outsiders, two men and a dangerously charismatic woman, on the village’s woodland borders sets in motion a series of events that unmakes Walter Thirsk’s village in just one week. The harvest is blackened by smoke and fear, cruel punishment is handed out to the innocent, and there are allegations of witchcraft.

But there is something more sinister at the heart of Walter’s story, and he may be the only man left to tell it . . .