THE GATHERING NIGHT
by Margaret Elphinstone
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Pub Date Sep 01 2009 | Archive Date Sep 01 2012
Description
Between Grandmother Mountain and the cold sea, Alaia and the rest of the Auk people live off the land. But when her brother goes hunting and never returns, the fragile balance of life is upset. Half starved and maddened with grief, Alaia’s mother follows her visions and goes in search of her lost son. Then strangers from a distant tribe appear seeking shelter. Are their stories of a great wave and a people perished really to be believed?
The incomers precipitate suspicion and intrigue as their hosts use intuition and ritual to discover the truth. On successive nights in their gathering camp the Auk People hear the story from the lips of the participants. In a society at one with the animals it hunts, the story culminates with the hunter hunted and a ritual death in the western mountains.
A tale of conflict, love, loss and natural disaster, this drama brings to life our Mesolithic past. A celebration of wildness, The Gathering Night also resonates as an ecological parable for our planet 8000 years on.
The incomers precipitate suspicion and intrigue as their hosts use intuition and ritual to discover the truth. On successive nights in their gathering camp the Auk People hear the story from the lips of the participants. In a society at one with the animals it hunts, the story culminates with the hunter hunted and a ritual death in the western mountains.
A tale of conflict, love, loss and natural disaster, this drama brings to life our Mesolithic past. A celebration of wildness, The Gathering Night also resonates as an ecological parable for our planet 8000 years on.
Advance Praise
‘a fine purveyor of evocative literary historical fiction...Excellently researched, it wears that knowledge lightly, concentrating on the human heart of the tale.’ - The Big Issue
‘It is Elphinstone’s formidable depictiction of nature which is the greatest strength in this novel...The reader is ultimately engaged by Elphinstone’s beguiling prose to listen well to the strange sotries of struggle, stoicism and survival coursing throughout this challenging novel.’ - Independent on Sunday
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781552788004 |
| PRICE | 24.95 |
| PAGES | 332 |
