Join Samuel Fisher for this live event in the very village where his second novel is set. Wivenhoe is a haunting story set in an alternate present, a world blanketed by snow, a world that is slowly waking up to the fact that it is living through an environmental disaster.

Samuel will be in conversation with Justin Hopper, author of The Old Weird Albion, as they explore the themes of the novel – complicity, love, loyalty, and the boundaries of human instinct.

Venue:  Wivenhoe Library, 104/6 High Street, Wivenhoe, Colchester, CO7 9AB

Date and time: Wednesday 8th June, 7.00pm

Tickets:  £8 / £7 concessions (Students, Under 27s and Jobseekers)

Box Office: Book online or via Mercury Theatre 01206 573948 (10am – 8pm Tuesday to Saturday)

Wivenhoe

“Never thought he would miss the mud: the gleaming, slickness of it. The slap and suck at the turning of the tide; its rich, bird-shit stink after a hot day and a couple of pints at the Rose. Or the green-blue-yellow hues that marked the changes in the light, as the days and seasons marched over the village and the river. And now, just snow. Endless snow.”

A young man is found brutally murdered in the middle of the snowed-in village of Wivenhoe. Over his body stands another man, axe in hand. The gathered villagers must deal with the consequences of an act that no-one tried to stop.

Wivenhoe is a haunting novel set in an alternate present, in a world that is slowing waking up to the fact that it is living through an environmental disaster. Taking place over twenty-four hours and told through the voices of a mother and her adult son, we see how one small community reacts to social breakdown and isolation.

Samuel Fisher imagines a world, not unlike our own, struck down and on the edge of survival. Tense, poignant, and set against a dramatic landscape, Wivenhoe asks the question: if society as we know it is lost, what would we strive to save? At what point will we admit complicity in our own destruction?

Buy a copy of Wivenhoe from bookshop.org

About the Author

Samuel Fisher is a writer, bookseller and publisher. His debut novel, The Chameleon (Salt, 2018) was longlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize, shortlisted for the Collyer Bristow Prize and won the Betty Trask in 2019. He co-owns Burley Fisher Books in Hackney and is a director of Peninsula Press.

Photo of Samuel Fisher © Sophie Davidson