Harvest cover art

Harvest

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
1 credit a month to buy any audiobook in our entire collection.
Access to thousands of additional audiobooks and Originals from the Plus Catalogue.
Member-only deals & discounts.
Auto-renews at $16.45/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Harvest

By: Jim Crace
Narrated by: John Keating
Try Premium Plus free

Auto-renews at $16.45/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $26.99

Buy Now for $26.99

About this listen

As late summer steals in and the final pearls of barley are gleaned, a village comes under threat. Over the course of seven days, Walter Thirsk sees his hamlet unmade: the manor house set on fire, the harvest blackened, three new arrivals punished, and his neighbours accused of witchcraft. But something even darker is at the heart of his story, and he will be the only man left to tell it…

©2013 Jim Crace (P)2013 Recorded Books LLC Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Small Town & Rural
All stars
Most relevant  
Through the eyes of a partial outsider, Walter Thirsk, Jim Crace captures the moment the feudal cropping way of life in England gives way to the enclosure of land to make way for sheep. (I date the story around 1400, but the year is never stated.) This is a lyrical and elegiac novel which manages to inject poetry into what must have the typical way of life for the vast majority of our ancestors. The plot compresses the dissolution of one estate into a single week, but plot isn't the point of this novel (something that clearly disappointed other reviewers of the audio version). The narrator's delivery is a bit ponderous, but this does suit the novel's reflective tone and keen observations of the texture of life on the land. "Harvest" puts poetry and heart into an aspect of history - the peasantry - that's usually ignored by historical novels.

Our ancestors' lives

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.