The North Water

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2016
A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN NOTABLE BOOK 2016

A ship sets sail with a killer on board . . .

1859. A man joins a whaling ship bound for the Arctic Circle. Having left the British Army with his reputation in tatters, Patrick Sumner has little option but to accept the position of ship's surgeon on this ill-fated voyage. But when, deep into the journey, a cabin boy is discovered brutally killed, Sumner finds himself forced to act. Soon he will face an evil even greater than he had encountered at the siege of Delhi, in the shape of Henry Drax: harpooner, murderer, monster . . .

‘Behold: one of the finest books of the year' Independent

‘McGuire delivers one bravura set-piece after another . . . The North Water has, in places, a Conrad–Melville undercurrent, but for the most part it is Dickens’s influence that is most keenly felt . . . This is a stunning novel, one that snares the reader from the outset and keeps the tightest grip until its bitter end’
— Financial Times on The North Water

‘Horrifically gripping. Such fine writing might have been lifted from the pages of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick’
— Independent on Sunday on The North Water

‘Terrific, seamed with pitch black humour and possessed of a momentum that's kept up to the final, unexpected but resoundingly satisfying scene ... Inspired’
— Stephanie Cross, Daily Mail on The North Water

‘As a storyteller, McGuire has a sure and unwavering touch, and he has engineered a superbly compelling suspense narrative . . . As a stylist, too, McGuire is never less than assured . . . a writer of exceptional craft and confidence’
— Paraic O'Connell, Irish Times on The North Water