Sacred Country Explained

Sacred Country
Author:	Rose Tremain
Country:	United Kingdom
Language:	English
Publisher:	Sinclair-Stevenson (UK) Scribner (US)
Release Date:	1992 (UK), 1993 (US)
Media Type:	Print, audio & eBook
Pages:	320
Isbn:	1-85619-118-4

Sacred Country is a novel by English author Rose Tremain. It was published in 1992 by Sinclair-Stevenson^[1] and won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize^[2] and Prix Femina étranger.^[3] It has been compared to Virginia Woolf's Orlando.^[4]

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".^[5]

Reception

Positive review extracts on the back cover of the 2002 Vintage edition :

• "Hypnotic...Curiously beautiful and strikingly original" - Spectator
• "Brilliant...A strong, complex, unsentimental novel" - Times Literary Supplement
• "Rose Tremain writes comedy that can break your heart...Funny absorbing and quite original. I've read nothing to touch it this year" - Literary Review

Stephen Dobyns writes for the New York Times, "a book that makes us feel good about the state of fiction in an uncertain market"^[6]

Novelist Lynn Freed observes "The writing... is sheer delight. It is skilled, intelligent storytelling at its best".^[7]

Film adaptation

Filmmaker Jan Dunn has acquired the film rights to the novel and is adapting the screenplay.^[8] Other sources state that Tremain herself is adapting it in three parts for television.^[9]

External links

• Roots on the map Review from The Independent by Natasha Walter

Notes and References

1. Web site: Fantastic Fiction . fantasticfiction.com . 16 April 2022.
2. Web site: James Tait Black Prize winners . 16 April 2022 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20110927024752/http://www.ed.ac.uk/about/people/tait-black/fiction . 27 September 2011.
3. Web site: Prix Femina - Roman Etranger . 16 April 2022 . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20160313205540/http://www.prix-litteraires.net/detail_prix_auteur.php?auteur=1949_Rose_Tremain . 13 March 2016. fr.
4. Book: Sacred Country Book by Rose Tremain - Simon & Schuster . June 1995 . 9780671886097 . 16 April 2022 . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20201202093904/https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Sacred-Country/Rose-Tremain/9780671886097 . 2 December 2020. Tremain . Rose . Simon and Schuster .
5. Back cover of 2002 Vintage edition
6. News: Dobyns . Stephen . 11 April 1993 . Muddling Through . . 16 April 2022.
7. Book: Parent Lesher, Linda . 1 February 2000 . The Best Novels of the Nineties . McFarland . 249 . 0786407425.
8. Web site: Jan Dunn . united agents . 16 April 2022 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20100622005109/http://unitedagents.co.uk/jan-dunn . 22 June 2010.
9. Web site: Music and Silence by Rose Tremain . Randomhouse . 16 April 2022 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20050226004624/http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/features/musicsilence/ . 26 February 2005.