The Book of Guilt

Contributors

By Catherine Chidgey

Formats and Prices

Price

$30.00

Format

Format:

  1. Hardcover $30.00
  2. ebook $14.99

After a very different outcome to WWII than the one history recorded, 1979 England is a country ruled by a government whose aims have sinister underpinnings and alliances. In the Hampshire countryside, 13-year-old triplets Vincent, Lawrence and William are the last remaining residents at the Captain Scott Home for Boys, where every day they must take medicine to protect themselves from a mysterious illness to which many of their friends have succumbed. The lucky ones who recover are allowed to move to Margate, a seaside resort of mythical proportions.

In nearby Exeter, 13-year-old Nancy lives a secluded life with her parents, who dote on her but never let her leave the house. As the triplets’ lives begin to intersect with Nancy’s, bringing to light a horrifying truth about their origins and their likely fate, the children must unite to escape – and survive.

  • PRAISE FOR THE AXEMAN'S CARNIVAL

    "Gorgeously haunting."
    Library Journal, starred review
  • PRAISE FOR PET
     
    • BEST OF THE YEAR: WASHINGTON POST, NEW YORKER, SLATE, CRIMEREADS, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, AMAZON BOOK REVIEW
    • NYT EDITORS' CHOICE


    "Sharp-edged, deliciously dark."
    Slate
  • PRAISE FOR REMOTE SYMPATHY
    • LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION
    • SHORTLISTED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD


    "Chidgey is a writer of formidable resources, a deft stylist posessed of uncanny imaginative acuity."
    The Guardian
  • "Highly original and deeply researched, Catherine Chidgey's REMOTE SYMPATHY is a powerful and disturbing study in terrible lies and the human need to believe them . . . Few readers will close the covers of this book unshaken."
    Annie Proulx, author of Barkskins
  • "A vital turn in Holocaust literature."
    Publisher's Weekly, starred review

On Sale
Sep 16, 2025
Page Count
400 pages
ISBN-13
9781538774076

Catherine Chidgey

About the Author

Catherine Chidgey’s novels have been published to international acclaim. Her first, In a Fishbone Church, won Best First Book at the New Zealand Book Awards and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. In the UK it won the Betty Trask Award and was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Her second, Golden Deeds, was a Notable Book of the Year in the New York Times and a Best Book in the LA Times. Catherine has won the Prize in Modern Letters, the Katherine Mansfield Award, the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship and the Janet Frame Fiction Prize. Her novel Remote Sympathy was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her novels The Wish Child and The Axeman’s Carnival both won the Acorn Prize for Fiction, New Zealand’s most prestigious literary award. She lives in Ngāruawāhia, New Zealand, and lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Waikato.

Learn more about this author