Run to the Western Shore by Tim Pears

“A literary novelist who beautifully expresses the old ways …
equally adept at writing action and romance.” The Times

“Pears is a wonderful storyteller with a truly remarkable sense of
time and place” Scotsman

“A gifted storyteller, steeped in country lore and the beauty of
ordinary events.” New York Times

Published by Swift Press on 2 November 2023 | Hardback | £12.99

RUN TO THE WESTERN SHORE is a beautifully written, evocative historical novel of quest and struggle – an ode to the land and Welsh folklore and a love story about the reconciliation of opposites in times of need.

Set in Britain in AD 72, Run to the Western Shore tells the story of a young Roman slave, Quintus, and Owen, daughter of the chief of a local tribe. Quintus, long exiled from his people, has travelled great odysseys in the retinue of a powerful man, and although he is a citizen of nowhere, he is also a man of reason who is fluent in many languages. Owen, imperious tribal royalty, is rooted in her native land (Wales) – a volatile warrior, fiercely attached to the natural world.

Promised to a powerful Roman by her father as part of a peace treaty, Owen flees during the night, taking Quintus with her. Hunted by an army, the two make their way across the country, living off the land, heading for the western shore…

TIM PEARS is a much-admired, prize-winning writer whose prose has been likened to Marquez, Faulkner and Hardy. His recent West Country Trilogy was a critic’s favourite. Born in 1956, Tim grew up in Devon and left school at sixteen. He worked in a wide variety of jobs: welder, librarian, reporter, archaeological worker, fruit picker, psychiatric nurse, groundsman in a caravan park, painter & decorator, and night porter in Devon, Wales, France, Norfolk and Oxford.

Throughout this time he was always writing, and later making short films. He completed a Directing course at the National Film and TV School, graduating in the same month that his first novel, In the Place of Fallen Leaves, was published, in 1993.

In the Place of Fallen Leaves was awarded the Hawthornden Prize and the Ruth Hadden Memorial Award. Tim’s second novel, In a Land of Plenty, was made into a ten-part drama series for the BBC broadcast in 2001. Other novels include, A Revolution of the Sun, Wake Up, Blenheim Orchard, Landed and Disputed Land.

Landed was given the MJA Open Book Award and was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. All of these novels were chronicles of our time, exploring moral challenges as they are expressed in the dynamics and politics of relationships and family life.

In the Light of Morning was a departure, set in Yugoslavia in the Second World War. Tim then embarked on his most ambitious work, a trilogy of novels (The Horseman, The Wanderers and The Redeemed) set before, during and in the aftermath of the First World War.

Tim is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in Oxford, and is married to a psychoanalyst. He and his wife have two children. Apart from family life, he enjoys urban rambling and walking the dog (his first listener and a harsh critic) and rural foraging. Along with cinema, sport has been Tim’s other passion. He was a third-rate footballer and mediocre tennis player, and remains a poor ping-pong player. He continues to be an
avid spectator of the ‘amazing human invention that is the game of football’.

“Tim Pears writes beautifully . the descriptions, executed with painterly exactness, are a constant delight. The prose really sings.” Mail on Sunday

“Pears is an exemplary historical novelist with a Romantic eye, his evocation of the land’s sounds, smells and tastes are a match for any of the great scribes.” The Times

“His prose is luminous, drawing in the reader . Pears’ fiction has been likened to Thomas Hardy’s, and the comparison is apposite.” The Observer

“He’s an astonishing novelist, as interested in small domestic detail as in the wider implications of human relationships.” Good Housekeeping

“A gifted storyteller, steeped in … the beauty of ordinary events. Like Thomas Hardy whose kindred spirit quietly animates these pages, he is concerned with the dignity of work, the force of destiny and the consequences of human passion.” New York Times

“Reminiscent of Faulkner and García Márquez, the writing retains a very English scale . Sensitive, heart-warming and hallucinatory.” Financial Times

“This is the real thing. This is whatever I mean by the work of a born writer . Comic and wry and elegiac and shrewd and thoughtful all at once.” A. S. Byatt

“The characters are beautifully and economically drawn, and he is excellent on the sights and especially the smells of the landscape.” The Times