'REMARKABLE' Sarah Perry | 'EXTRAORDINARILY IMMERSIVE' Guardian | 'EPIC' Zoe Ball Book Club
'A REALLY, REALLY GOOD READ' BBC R2 Book Club' | 'LYRICAL' Stylist | 'POETIC' Daily Mail

1627. In a notorious historical event, pirates raided the coast of Iceland and abducted 400 people into slavery in Algiers. Among them a pastor, his wife, and their children.

In her acclaimed debut novel Sally Magnusson imagines what history does not record: the experience of Asta, the pastor's wife, as she faces her losses with the one thing left to her - the stories from home - and forges an ambiguous bond with the man who bought her. Uplifting, moving, and sharply witty, The Sealwoman's Gift speaks across centuries and oceans about loss, love, resilience and redemption.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE HWA DEBUT CROWN | THE BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD | THE MCKITTERICK PRIZE | THE PAUL TORDAY MEMORIAL PRIZE | THE WAVERTON GOOD READ AWARD | A ZOE BALL ITV BOOK CLUB PICK

'Sally Magnusson has taken an amazing true event and created a brilliant first novel. It's an epic journey in every sense: although it's historical, it's incredibly relevant to our world today. We had to pick it' Zoe Ball Book Club

'Richly imagined and energetically told' Sunday Times
'The best sort of historical novel' Scotsman
'Compelling stuff' Good Housekeeping
'An accomplished and intelligent novel' Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, author of Why Did You Lie?
'Vivid and compelling' Adam Nichols, co-translator of The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson

*And Sally Magnusson's second novel, The Ninth Child, publishes March 2020 - available to pre-order now*

In 1627 Barbary pirates raided the coast of Iceland and abducted some 400 of its people, including 250 from a tiny island off the mainland. Among the captives sold into slavery in Algiers were the island pastor, his wife and their three children. Although the raid itself is well documented, little is known about what happened to the women and children afterwards. It was a time when women everywhere were largely silent.

In this brilliant reimagining, Sally Magnusson gives a voice to Ásta, the pastor's wife. Enslaved in an alien Arab culture Ásta meets the loss of both her freedom and her children with the one thing she has brought from home: the stories in her head. Steeped in the sagas and folk tales of her northern homeland, she finds herself experiencing not just the separations and agonies of captivity, but the reassessments that come in any age when intelligent eyes are opened to other lives, other cultures and other kinds of loving.

The Sealwoman's Gift is about the eternal power of storytelling to help us survive. The novel is full of stories - Icelandic ones told to fend off a slave-owner's advances, Arabian ones to help an old man die. And there are others, too: the stories we tell ourselves to protect our minds from what cannot otherwise be borne, the stories we need to make us happy.

I have been banging the drum for The Sealwoman's Gift for a solid year now, still recommending it to every person I possibly can - and it was the first book on this list, the only absolute certainty from the beginning. A stunning debut novel, it is based on the true story of 17th century Icelanders who were kidnapped and sold as slaves in North Africa. The writing is beautiful, the sense of time and place once again at the top of the author's list of many talents, and the magical-realism of the Sealwoman utterly convincing.