End We Start From

A startlingly beautiful story of a family's survival, The End We Start From is a haunting but hopeful dystopian vision of a familiar world made dangerous and unstable.'Engrossing, compelling' - Naomi Alderman, author of The Power'I was moved, terrified, uplifted – sometimes all three at once' - Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl With a Pearl EarringMegan Hunter's honed and spare prose paints an imagined future as realistic as it is frightening. Though the country is falling apart around them and its people are forced to become refugees, this family’s world – of new life and new hope – sings with love.In the midst of a mysterious environmental crisis, as London is submerged below flood waters, a woman gives birth to her first child. Days later, the family are forced to leave their home in search of safety. As they move from place to place, shelter to shelter, their journey traces both fear and wonder as the baby's small fists grasp at the things he sees, as he grows and stretches, thriving and content against all the odds.With Benedict Cumberbatch calling it ‘a stunning tale of motherhood’, film rights have been sold to his production company SunnyMarch.

The End We Start From is strange and powerful, and very apt for these uncertain times. I was moved, terrified, uplifted – sometimes all three at once. It takes skill to manage that, and Hunter has a poet’s understanding of how to make each word count., The End We Start From is a beautifully spare, haunting meditation on the persistence of life after catastrophe. I loved it., A shot of distilled story . . . engrossing, compelling and finally hopeful, I can’t remember ever having read a novel quite as sparing or as daring as Megan Hunter’s The End We Start From, or one that delivers so mighty an impact from such delicate materials. It is a moving, wistful and compelling debut., An exceptional, alarming and beautiful book, which still echoes months after I finished reading it. Megan Hunter is a writer of unnerving power.

Megan Hunter was born in Manchester in 1984, and studied English Literature at Sussex and Cambridge. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and she was a finalist for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award. The End We Start From, her first novel, has been translated into seven languages, was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the 2017 Books Are My Bag Readers Awards and longlisted for the Aspen Words Prize.