Now We Shall Be Entirely Free: The Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year 2019

His writing is vivid, precise and constantly surprising. It reads easily, suspends life until it is read and is a source of wonder and delight’ Hilary Mantel in the Sunday TimesOne rainswept winter’s night in 1809, an unconscious man is carried into a house in Somerset. He is Captain John Lacroix, home from Britain’s disastrous campaign against Napoleon’s forces in Spain.Gradually Lacroix recovers his health, but not his peace of mind, so when the command comes to return to his regiment, he lights out instead for the Hebrides ? unaware that a vicious English corporal and a Spanish officer are secretly on his trail.In luminous prose, Miller portrays a man shattered by what he has witnessed, on a journey that leads to unexpected friendships, even to love. But as the short northern summer reaches its zenith, the shadow of the enemy creeps ever closer. Freedom, for John Lacroix, will come at a high price.—-Andrew Miller’s first novel, Ingenious Pain, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His subsequent novels include Oxygen, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Pure, which won the 2011 Costa Book of the Year Award