Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025
The Sunday Times Fiction Paperback of the Year

Set in December 1962, in the depths of a brutal West Country winter, The Land in Winter unfolds with quiet intensity as two neighbouring couples find their carefully constructed lives beginning to fracture.

Local doctor Eric Parry heads out on his morning rounds, carrying secrets he barely acknowledges, while his pregnant wife sleeps on in the fragile comfort of their cottage. Across the frozen fields, Rita Simmons dreams of a past life her husband would rather forget. He, meanwhile, is already awake, struggling to keep afloat a failing dairy farm and a future he hoped would remake him.

When the ordinary cold of an English December hardens into violent blizzards, isolation deepens and tensions rise. Cut off from the outside world, the four find themselves trapped not just by snow, but by love, money, class, and the choices they can no longer escape.

Where do you hide when you cannot leave home? And in a frozen world, where can you run?

Graceful, unsettling, and quietly devastating, The Land in Winter is a novel of rare beauty and emotional precision, capturing the fragility of human connection and the fault lines beneath everyday lives. A modern classic in the making from Andrew Miller.