The Booker Shortlisted Modern Classic from the author of Last Orders Mothering Sunday and Here We Are One summer morning in 1943 lock-keeper Henry Crick finds the drowned body of a sixteen-year-old boy. Nearly forty years later his son Tom a history teacher is driven by a bizarre marital crisis and the provocation of one of his students to forsake the formal teaching of history—and tell stories. Waterland is a classic of modern fiction: a vision of England seen through its mysterious amphibious Fen country; a sinuous meditation on the workings of time; a tale of two families startling in its twists and turns and universal in its reach. Compulsively readable it is a novel of resonant depth and encyclopaedic richness mixing human and natural history and exploring the tragic forces that take us both forwards and back. It is also a book about beer eels the French Revolution the end of the world windmills will-o’-the-wisps murder love education curiosity and—supremely—the malign and merciful element of water. ‘A quite brilliant novel’ Daily Telegraph‘Inspired’ New York Times & 160;. Language: English