Menewood: Second novel in the Hild Sequence

Menewood by Nicola Griffith (FSGxMCD, 2023). Cover art by Anna and Elena Balbusso.
  • US: Hardcover, ebook, digital audio available 3 October, 2023
  • UK: Digital audio and ebook 3 October, hardcover from 21 November, 2023

BUY

Bookshop.org | Amazon.com | Apple Books | Barnes & Noble | Phinney Books | Target | Powell’s

PRAISE FOR MENEWOOD AND HILD

  • “[A] masterpiece of immersion… Reading Menewood is like opening a door and stepping into another world… There’s dreadful violence, yes, and profound loss…but also bristling energy, fierce joy. There’s Hild, still, at the heart of it all, figuring herself out in the vast and rippling pattern around her.” — Amal El-Mohtar, New York Times
  • “Menewood is a searing depiction of a world at war, and the ferocious and complicated woman at the center of it. Griffith brings all her genius to this book.” — Maria Dahvana Headley, author of Beowulf: A New Translation
  • “Menewood is an absolute triumph. Hild is truly a hero for all women, right here and now.” — Carolyne Larrington, Professor of Medieval European Literature, University of Oxford
  • “Density of detail, political complexity, and brilliance of characterization…this may be the major work so far of a major talent.” — Gary Wolfe, Locus
  • “Hild was unexpected and beautiful. Menewood is an even more stunning sequel to an already stunning book..and it is a marvel.” — Roseanna Pendlebury, Nerds of a Feather
  • “Griffith follows up Hild with a transportive second volume” — Publishers Weekly
  • “In it’s ambition and intelligence, Hild might best be compared to Hilary Mantel’s novels about Thomas Cromwell.” — Bookforum
  • “A magnificent and convincing portrayal of a strange, wild, beautiful world.” — Guardian
  • “Vivid, richly detailed…a powerful, clever novel. Griffith illuminates the so-called Dark Ages, reconstructing an often alien historical world with great precision.” — BBC History Magazine
  • “Hild is a book as loving as it is fierce, brilliant and accomplished. To read it felt like a privilege and a gift.” — NPR
  • “…dazzling… Griffith’s lyrical prose emphasizes the savagery of the political landscape, in which religion, sex, and superstition are wielded mercilessly for personal gain.” — Paris Review Daily
  • “The novel resonates to many of the same chords as Beowulf, the legends of King Arthur, Lord of the Rings, and Game of Thrones—to the extent that Hild begins to feel like the classic on which those books are based.” — Neal Stephenson
  • “What a fabulous book! I fell into this world completely and was sorry to come out. Truly, truly remarkable.” — Karen Joy Fowler

PLOT (FROM THE PUBLISHER):

In the much anticipated return to the world of Hild, Nicola Griffith’s Menewood transports readers back to seventh-century Britain, a land of rival kings and religions poised for epochal change.

Hild is no longer the bright child who made a place in Edwin Overking’s court with her seemingly supernatural insight. She is eighteen, honed and tested, the formidable Lady of Elmet, now building her personal stronghold in the valley of Menewood.

But Edwin needs his most trusted advisor. Old alliances are fraying. Younger rivals are snapping at his heels. War is brewing―bitter war, winter war. Not knowing who to trust he becomes volatile and unpredictable. Hild begins to understand the true extent of the chaos ahead, and now she must navigate the turbulence and fight to protect both the kingdom and her own people.

Hild will face the losses and devastation of total war, and then she must find a new strength, the implacable determination to forge a radically different path for herself and her people. In the valley, her last redoubt, her community slowly takes root. She trains herself and her unexpected allies in new ways of thinking as she prepares for one last wager: risking all on a single throw for a better future…

In the last decade, Hild has become a beloved classic of epic storytelling. Menewood picks up where that journey left off, and exceeds it in every way

FEELS (FROM THE AUTHOR)

Menewood begins four months after the end of Hild, and covers less than four years of Hild’s life, but those years are some of the most tumultuous in Northern British history: epic and intense, full of the extremes of war. (If you imagine it as a trilogy in one volume you might get a sense of what to expect.) Hild experiences almost every emotion a person can—love and lust, war and victory, grief and loss, belonging and savage joy—all while guiding others past their own fear and ambition. Through it all she grows and changes, coming to truly understand power and how to make, break, and shape kings.

Menewood is also full of quieter moments: peace, pleasure, contentment; forgiveness, friendship, and farewells. It is a book about life—how it feels, what it means, why it changes—set against the backdrop of total war and regime change.

If Hild was about a child relying on her agile mind and acute observations of nature and human behaviour to stay one step ahead of the whims of a volatile king, then Menewood revolves around a young woman becoming herself—learning to live life on her own terms; to build, hold, and wield power—exploring and really inhabiting who she is.

Above all, Menewood is about Hild. She is on every page, the burning heart around which events turn. And, just as in the first book, Hild is most at home in nature, so the book is full of water, sky, and high wild places. I can’t wait for you to read it.

EVENTS

See my Events page for full details (and some non-Menewood-related things), but here are the bare bones:

CONTACT

For enquiries about appearances or interviews or other Menewood-related events, the people to talk to are my publicists at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Sarita Varma and Stephen Weil.

For enquiries about rights, see the Contacts page for the relevant agent.