Alive in the Merciful Country

A.L. Kennedy was born in Dundee. and now divides her time between Scotland and the East Midlands. She has won a variety of UK and international book awards, including a Lannan Award, the Costa Prize, the Heinrich Heine Preis, the Somerset Maugham Award and the John Llewellyn Rees Prize. She has twice been included on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list. She has written ten novels, one of which was longlisted for the Booker Prize, six short story collections, three books of non-fiction and three books for children. She also performs occasionally in one-person shows and as a stand-up comic.

'Alive in the Merciful Country is an ambitious novel that asks potent questions about abuses of state and personal power … combines a beadily bleak eye with a standup’s comic timing and a profound humanity that breaks open the heart.'