Search
£10.99
Published
1 August 2017
PBO with flaps
9781910400371
Ebook
9781910400388
Press Release
Coming soon.
 

WINNER SWISS LITERATURE PRIZE
WINNER PRIX DU PUBLIC DE LA R.T.S.
WINNER Prix des Lectrices Edelweiss
SHORTLISTED PRIX MÉDICIS

Translated by Charlotte Mandell

1976. Europe is in the grip of the worst drought in living memory.
The Sutter household teeters on the brink of ruin. The farmer and pater familias has invested his entire fortune in 10,000 chickens and a modern barn. But the barn’s cooling systems are failing, and the chicks are dying off in their hundreds.
Meanwhile his wife invites the mysterious Cécile, glamorous, metropolitan and sexy, to stay at the farm.
Their son, 13-year-old Gus, observes helplessly as his family and his carefree childhood dissolve in the heat.
With poignancy and humour, Year of the Drought evokes several worlds – of childhood, of traditional farming, of patriarchy – at the very moment of their destruction.
—-

Old Street Publishing Year of the Drought

WINNER SWISS LITERATURE PRIZE
WINNER PRIX DU PUBLIC DE LA R.T.S.
WINNER Prix des Lectrices Edelweiss
SHORTLISTED PRIX MÉDICIS

Translated by Charlotte Mandell

1976. Europe is in the grip of the worst drought in living memory.
The Sutter household teeters on the brink of ruin. The farmer and pater familias has invested his entire fortune in 10,000 chickens and a modern barn. But the barn’s cooling systems are failing, and the chicks are dying off in their hundreds.
Meanwhile his wife invites the mysterious Cécile, glamorous, metropolitan and sexy, to stay at the farm.
Their son, 13-year-old Gus, observes helplessly as his family and his carefree childhood dissolve in the heat.
With poignancy and humour, Year of the Drought evokes several worlds – of childhood, of traditional farming, of patriarchy – at the very moment of their destruction.
—-

 10.99
 
 

‘This is great literature . . . a book that concerns a vast public’
—Jury, SWISS LITERATURE PRIZE

 
 
  • ‘Buti’s language oscillates between an almost biblical force and a delicate, scarcely perceptible irony. Year of the Drought is precise and powerful… a stunning evocation of an epochal change in rural life, affecting in equal measure animals, people, plants, the soil, and even the air itself..’
    —Die Zeit
  • ‘A great novel…. masterfully evokes not the end of the world, but the end of a world … a beautiful and very moving book’
    —Le Nouvel Observateur
  • ‘A beautifully constructed, imaginative and delicate novel that concentrates the heat like a magnifying glass’
    —Neue Zürcher Zeitung
 
 
Roland Buti