7.8 /10 1 Votes
Country United Kingdom Publication date 1992 (UK), 1993 (US) Pages 320 Originally published 1992 Page count 320 Awards Prix Femina étranger | 3.9/5 Goodreads Language English Media type Print, audio & eBook ISBN 1-85619-118-4 Genre Fiction | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Publishers Sinclair-Stevenson (UK), Charles Scribner's Sons (US) Similar Works by Rose Tremain, Fiction books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sacred Country is a novel by English author Rose Tremain, it was published in 1992 by Sinclair Stevenson and won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Prix Femina Etranger. It has been compared to Virginia Woolf's Orlando.
Contents
Plot introduction
"At the age of six, Mary Ward, the child of a poor farming family in Suffolk, has a revelation: she isn't Mary, she's a boy. So begins Mary's heroic struggle to change gender, while around her others also strive to find a place of safety and fulfilment in a savage and confusing world".
Reception
Positive review extracts on the back cover of the 2002 Vintage edition :
Stephen Dobyns writes for the New York Times, "a book that makes us feel good about the state of fiction in an uncertain market"
Novelist Lynne Freed observes "The writing... is sheer delight. It is skilled, intelligent storytelling at its best".
Film adaptation
Filmmaker Jan Dunn has acquired the film rights to the novel and is adapting the screenplay. Other sources state that Tremain herself is adapting it in three parts for television.