The Same Country
‘The Same Country is an electric, emotionally charged novel: it seethes with its own energy. Pick it up, and you won’t want to put it down.’
PHILIP HOARE, author of Leviathan, and Albert & the Whale
Join us on Thursday 16th November as fiction writer, journalist and Southampton associate professor Carole Burns reads from her debut novel, The Same Country, and talks to author Rebecca Smith about writing about race and racism in America. This event has been rescheduled it was originally due to be held on 2nd November.
The Same Country is a powerful and thought-provoking novel about family, friendship and the lengths we go to unravel the truth.
Twenty years ago, Joe was shot dead in the bedroom of his white girlfriend. It was deemed an accident, but now his friend Cassie – a journalist – is not so sure. As racial tension ignites a string of violence across their New England city, will the answers Cassie is so desperate to find cause everyone's world to shatter?
‘…astute, powerful and pacy’
CLAIRE FULLER, winner of the 2021 Costa Novel Prize for Unsettled Ground
‘The Same Country unearths long buried truths that remain the truths of America.’
GISH JEN, author of The Resisters and Thank You, Mr. Nixon
Carole Burns is a freelance journalist for the Washington Post and an associate professor in Creative Writing at the University of Southampton. Her short story collection, The Missing Woman, won the John C. Zacharis Award from the prestigious U.S. literary magazine Ploughshares. Her non-fiction book, Off the Page: Writers Talk About Beginnings, Endings and Everything in Between, was based on her interviews with writers including Anthony Doerr, Andrea Levy, Colm Tóibín and Jhumpa Lahiri.
Twitter @Carole_Burns
Instagram: @writercaroleburns
Rebecca Smith, a principal teaching fellow at the University of Southampton, is the author of five novels, two non-fiction books, and the text of a picture book. Her most recent novel for adults is The Ash Museum (Legend Press) which was inspired by her time as the writer in residence at Jane Austen’s House in Chawton and by being left hundreds of old family photographs and letters.
Twitter: @RMSmithAuthor
Instagram: rebeccamarysmith7
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Access info
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