Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jan 2015
256 pages
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Publication Information
In the near future, Harry and Michel live in the basement of a luxury apartment block, guarding the inhabitants. No one goes outside. The world might be at war, it might even have been plunged into nuclear winter. No one knows.
But one weekend, all of the residents leave the block, one by one. All but the man on floor 29. Harry and Michel stick to their posts. All they know, all they can hope for, is that if they are vigilant, the "Organization" will reward them with a promotion to an elite cadre of security officers. But what if there were no one left to guard?
Playing on our darkest fears, The Guard is a tautly observed novel by a writer of striking and stylish originality.
Winner of the European Union Literature Prize, Peter Terrin's The Guard is a haunting novel of perceived oppression by the an omnipresent, but unknown, authority.
In the near future, Harry and Michel live in the basement of a luxury apartment block, guarding the inhabitants. No one goes outside. The world might be at war, it might even have been plunged into nuclear winter. No one knows.
But one weekend, all of the residents leave the block, one by one. All but the man on floor 29. Harry and Michel stick to their posts. All they know, all they can hope for, is that if they are vigilant, the "Organization" will reward them with a promotion to an elite cadre of security officers. But what if there were no one left to guard?
Playing on our darkest fears, The Guard is a tautly observed novel by a writer of striking and stylish originality.
"Starred Review. Terrin unabashedly invokes existentialist philosophy, and his vivid portrayal of characters gripped by unresolved fears and faced with absurd situations makes his work nectar for reflective readers." - Publishers Weekly
"With a lively translation from the original Dutch, this novel asks a whole lot of questions and provides very few answers, leaving us in Harry and Michel's position, trying to figure out the big picture from looking at a few small clues." - Booklist
" The sf aspects of the hinted at but unseen dystopian world outside the claustrophobic confines of theguards' universe shouldn't prevent this from reaching a wide audience." - Library Journal
"Webs of Pinteresque paranoia... Effectively horrid." - The Sunday Telegraph (UK)
"Terrin's wonderfully sinister, darkly funny novel owes more to this genre than to simple SF... Finely translated (from Dutch) by David Colmer, the deadpan, exact, discomfiting prose keeps an icy grip." - The Independent (UK)
"A mix of psychological thriller and SF fable, this strange, wonderfully claustrophobic novel." - The Guardian (UK)
"The Guard is a novel that leaves you astonished with its beauty and completeness." - NRC Handelsblad
"The Guard is a sublime book... a brilliantly told story." - Het Parool
This information about The Guard was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Flemish novellist Peter Terrin has been described as 'a master of ominous detail' and is considered by critics to be a literary maverick, a classic writer who doesn't follow trends, and a masterful stylist. He has also written for the theatre and is active as a columnist. Terrin was the recipient of the European Union Literature prize and has been nominated for major literary awards several times, including the AKO Literature, Libris Literature, and the West Flanders Prizes for Literature.
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