Culture February 26, 2013

Jim Crace’s new novel, set in an unspecified part of rural England during an unspecified time that might be the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, begins with two pillars of smoke – an appropriately biblical turn. One of these announces that, somewhere within the boundaries of the tiny village where Harvest is set, new settlers have arrived: the law “gives the right of settlement and cedes a portion of our share to any vagrants who might succeed in putting up four vulgar walls and sending up some smoke before we catch them doing it”. The other column of smoke