Cryptographer Q prepares for a new life on Bodmin Moor and discovers what really matters to him.
Q's work as a quantum cryptographer has led him to believe a crisis is imminent for civilisation and he's looking for somewhere to ride out what's ahead. He buys a ruined farmhouse on Bodmin Moor and begins turning it into a refuge.
Cornwall does not offer simple escape. The moor brings him into contact with reintroduced lynxes and aurochs, local eccentrics, an Arthurian knight and a watchful holy man. All while Q negotiates his relationships with his children, his ex-wife and the beguiling Eva. As our systems of electronic control falter, Q learns that survival may depend as much on community, love and humour as on preparation.
Shortlisted for the 2024 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, Light Over Liskeard is a warm, wry literary novel about technological collapse, rural life, family, second chances and what matters when the future is uncertain.
'Beguiling' Observer
'A feelgood story about friendship and love - vintage de Bernières' Daily Mirror
'A wonder... wry, wise' Daily Mail
'Heaps of old-fashioned adventure' The Times
Autorentext
Louis de Bernières is the bestselling author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book in 1995. His most recent books are So Much Life Left Over, The Dust That Falls From Dreams and The Autumn of the Ace, the short story collection Labels, the children's book Station Jim and the poetry collection The Cat in the Treble Clef.