SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024**The international bestseller****A Guardian Book of the Autumn 2023****Chosen as a book of the year by the independent.co.uk**'Her prose is a thing of wonder' Telegraph'Michaels's writing continues to stand head and shoulders above most other fiction' OBSERVER'Through luminous moments of chance, change, and even grace, Michaels shows us our humanity' MARGARET ATWOOD'Michaels is exceptionally open to beauty' GUARDIAN The triumphant new novel from the author of the Orange Prize-winning Fugitive Pieces: a soaring and luminous story of chance and change_________________________________________________1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory - a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night, his childhood on a faraway coast - as the snow falls. 1920. John has returned from war to North