Fans of Cormac McCarthy's dark novels will relish this exhumation of the Anglo-Saxons violated by Norman invaders in 1066. Its patois of modern and Old English puts readers firmly in their alien world. And when you finish it, you'll ask: how different are we from people who lived 1,000 years ago?Publisher's description:
In the aftermath of the Norman Invasion of 1066, William the Conqueror was uncompromising and brutal. English society was broken apart, its systems turned on their head. What is little known is that a fractured network of guerrilla fighters took up arms against the French occupiers. Written in what the author describes as a shadow tongue--a version of Old English updated so as to be understandable to the modern reader--The Wake renders the inner life of an Anglo-Saxon man with an accuracy and immediacy rare in historical fiction. To enter Buccmaster's world is to feel powerfully the sheer strangeness of the past. A tale of lost gods and haunted visions, The Wake is both a sensational, gripping story and a major literary achievement.