Sarah Waters

Be prepared! From a writer who never ceases to surprise comes a chilling ghost story. Sarah Waters (1966) is making an exclusive visit to the Netherlands and Belgium. She is coming to our BorderKitchen because her long-awaited new novel De kleine vreemdeling (The Little Stranger) is being published in translation. In 2003 she was selected as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. Vingervlug (Fingersmith) and De nachtwacht (The Night Watch) were both shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. Fluwelen begeerte, Affiniteit and Vingervlug have all been adapted for television.

In a dusty post-war summer, Dr Faraday is called to see his patient at the lonely Hundreds Hall. The once grand and impressive Georgian country house, inhabited for over two centuries by the Ayres family, is in severe decline: the brickwork is crumbling, the garden is overgrown with weeds, and the clock on the stable building has stopped at twenty to nine. The owners—mother, son and daughter—are struggling with a changing society, their own finite lives and their internal conflicts. But it seems the family is being haunted by something even more sinister. Dr Faraday does not yet realise how closely and terrifyingly their story will become intertwined with his own life.

“A chilling novel set in an English country house.”

“A brilliant writer… whose readers will believe everything she tells them.” — A.N. Wilson