A chilling novel that explores the extremes of childhood cruelty, now published as a Penguin Essential.
The Bird of Night
Written by Susan Hill
- Shortlisted
- The Booker Prize 1972
- Published by Hamish Hamilton
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Susan Hill’s evocative exploration of love and madness charts the relationship between a brilliant but unhinged poet and his faithful companion
Francis Croft, the greatest poet of his age, was mad. His world was a nightmare of internal furies and haunting poetic vision. Harvey Lawson watched and protected him until his final suicide. From his solitary old age, Harvey writes this brief account of their twenty years together and then burns all the papers to shut out an inquisitive world.
Susan Hill
Dame Susan Hill is a novelist and publisher who was Booker Prize-shortlisted in 1972 for The Bird of Night. As a judge: ‘I took the mountain of submitted novels on my honeymoon’
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