SHORTLISTED FOR THE PEN ACKERLEY PRIZE 2020-A uniquely strange and wonderful work of literature- Philip Hoare-An exciting new voice- Mark Cocker, author of Crow CountryIn his late thirties, Edward Parnell found himself trapped in the recurring nightmare of a family tragedy. For comfort, he turned to his bookshelves, back to the ghost stories that obsessed him as a boy, and to the writers through the ages who have attempted to confront what comes after death.In Ghostland, Parnell goes in search of the -sequestered places- of the British Isles, our lonely moors, our moss-covered cemeteries, our stark shores and our folkloric woodlands. He explores how these landscapes conjured and shaped a kaleidoscopic spectrum of literature and cinema, from the ghost stories and weird fiction of M. R. James, Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood to the children-s fantasy novels of Alan Garner and Susan Cooper; from W. G. Sebald-s The Rings of Saturn and Graham Swift-s Waterland to the archetypal -folk h
