Sacred Country
First edition (UK)
AuthorRose Tremain
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
PublisherSinclair-Stevenson (UK)
Scribner (US)
Publication date
1992 (UK), 1993 (US)
Media typePrint, audio & eBook
Pages320
ISBN1-85619-118-4

Sacred Country is a novel by English author Rose Tremain. It was published in 1992 by Sinclair-Stevenson[1] and won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize[2] and Prix Femina étranger.[3] It has been compared to Virginia Woolf's Orlando.[4]

Plot introduction

"At the age of six, Mary Ward, the child of a poor farming family in Suffolk, has a revelation: she isn't Mary, she's a boy. So begins Mary's heroic struggle to change gender, while around her others also strive to find a place of safety and fulfilment in a savage and confusing world".[5]

Reception

Positive review extracts on the back cover of the 2002 Vintage edition :

  • "Hypnotic...Curiously beautiful and strikingly original" - Spectator
  • "Brilliant...A strong, complex, unsentimental novel" - Times Literary Supplement
  • "Rose Tremain writes comedy that can break your heart...Funny absorbing and quite original. I've read nothing to touch it this year" - Literary Review

Stephen Dobyns writes for the New York Times, "a book that makes us feel good about the state of fiction in an uncertain market"[6]

Novelist Lynn Freed observes "The writing... is sheer delight. It is skilled, intelligent storytelling at its best".[7]

Film adaptation

Filmmaker Jan Dunn has acquired the film rights to the novel and is adapting the screenplay.[8] Other sources state that Tremain herself is adapting it in three parts for television.[9]

References

  1. ↑ "Fantastic Fiction". fantasticfiction.com. Retrieved 16 April 2022.
  2. ↑ "James Tait Black Prize winners". Archived from the original on 27 September 2011. Retrieved 16 April 2022.
  3. ↑ "Prix Femina - Roman Etranger" (in French). Archived from the original on 13 March 2016. Retrieved 16 April 2022.
  4. ↑ Tremain, Rose (June 1995). Sacred Country | Book by Rose Tremain - Simon & Schuster. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 9780671886097. Archived from the original on 2 December 2020. Retrieved 16 April 2022.
  5. ↑ Back cover of 2002 Vintage edition
  6. ↑ Dobyns, Stephen (11 April 1993). "Muddling Through". New York Times. Retrieved 16 April 2022.
  7. ↑ Parent Lesher, Linda (1 February 2000). The Best Novels of the Nineties. McFarland. p. 249. ISBN 0786407425.
  8. ↑ "Jan Dunn". united agents. Archived from the original on 22 June 2010. Retrieved 16 April 2022.
  9. ↑ "Music and Silence by Rose Tremain". Randomhouse. Archived from the original on 26 February 2005. Retrieved 16 April 2022.


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