We’ve selected 12 groups to shadow the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. Here we look at one of the shortlisted titles, Burial Rites, which will be reviewed by The London Book Club and Ellesmere Library Reading Group in more detail.
h2. About the book
In northern Iceland, 1829, Agnes Magnúsdóttir is condemned to death for her part in the brutal murder of her lover.
Agnes is sent to wait out her final months on the farm of district officer Jón Jónsson, his wife and their two daughters. Horrified to have a convicted murderer in their midst, the family avoid contact with Agnes. Only Tóti, the young assistant priest appointed Agnes’s spiritual guardian, is compelled to try to understand her. As the year progresses and the hardships of rural life force the household to work side by side, Agnes’s story begins to emerge and with it the family’s terrible realization that all is not as they had assumed.
About the author
Hannah Kent was born in Adelaide in 1985. As a teenager she travelled to Iceland on a Rotary Exchange, where she first heard the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir. Burial Rites is her first novel. It has been translated into twenty languages.
Get involved
Have you read Burial Rites? Let us know what you thought by leaving a comment below.
You can also read about the other titles shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and join the conversation on Twitter and Facebook.
