LONGLISTED: Exeter Novel Prize
Cast out for a crime
A holy hermit his only protector
Seven-year-old Wilfrid lives a privileged life as the eldest son of the warmaster to the King of Northumbria. But his parents don’t seem to love him and his life is turned upside down when he is given away to the monks of the island monastery of Lindisfarne.
There he is taken under the wing of Cuthbert, the community’s charismatic prior, who tries to cure him of the demons that torment him. But everywhere the boy goes, he seems to bring ill-fortune in his wake: to Fergus, drowned in the freezing North Sea, or to Sigi, his brother, who is struck down by plague when Wilfrid finds his way back home.
As he comes of age and major events erupt all around him – with Northumbria at war with the Picts, religious schisms raging and the queen taking desperate measures to conceive a son – Wilfrid gradually pieces together his own family history, and the ageing Cuthbert’s part in it.
An evocative tale of seventh-century religious and political life offers some startlingly modern lessons about trauma and guilt.