PRICE OF HOPE AND LOVE

From being included in the Booker 2021 longlist to being selected by Oprah's Book Club, this debut novel's moving tale of loss and the lies we tell ourselves has resonated across the board

- ARMAN KHAN

“Prentiss had learned from Landry that the language of grief was often nothing more than silence," so begins the fourteenth chapter in American author Nathan Harris's debut novel The Sweetness of Water, and it summarises the soul of this beautiful book. At a time when the American Civil War has only assumed greater proportions, Harris's novel documents the "dying days of the war". Set in Georgia, the novel is essentially a tale of two newly freed brothers. Penniless but liberated, their paths cross with a man still reeling from the loss of his son in the War. What follows is a dissection of what strangers can mean, the limits of loyalty, and the endless war between the new and the old.