Names for the Sea | Granta

  • Published: 04/07/2013
  • ISBN: 9781847084163
  • 129x20mm
  • 368 pages

Names for the Sea

Sarah Moss

At the height of the financial crisis in 2009, Sarah Moss and her husband moved with their two small children to Iceland. From their makeshift home among the half-finished skyscrapers of Reykjavik, Moss travels to hillsides of boiling mud and volcanic craters, and the remote farms and fishing villages of the far north. She watches the northern lights and the comings and goings of migratory birds, and as the weeks and months go by, she and her family find new ways to live.

One of the most enjoyable travel books I've read

Helen Rumbelow, The Times

Beautifully written ... Moss grapples with new foods, customs and landscapes that are both oddly familiar and wildly alien in this absorbing memoir

Carl Wilkinson, Financial Times

A fascinating and unusual book, a genuine news from nowhere, the gripping account of one person thinking and perceiving for herself

Joanna Kavenna, Literary Review

The Author

Sarah Moss is the author of eight novels., most recently The Fell and Summerwater. Her memoir of her year living in Iceland, Names for the Sea was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize. Her novels include Summerwater, Cold Earth, Night Waking, Bodies of Light (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize), Signs for Lost Children (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize), The Tidal Zone (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize) and Ghost Wall, which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2019. She was born in Glasgow, grew up in the north of England and now lives in Ireland, where she teaches on the MFA and MA creative writing programmes at University College Dublin.

More about the author →

From the Same Author

Sarah Moss on Granta.com

Essays & Memoir | Granta 166

Generation Gap

Sarah Moss

‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’

Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.

Essays & Memoir | Granta 160

A Wolf in the Forest Wants

Sarah Moss

‘I biked to the hospital anyway, because it didn’t occur to me to think of an alternative form of transport.’

Sarah Moss on her admission to hospital.

In Conversation | The Online Edition

In Conversation

Louise Kennedy & Sarah Moss

Two Ireland-based writers discussing national identity, disappointing holidays and art deco china.