Changes

|summary=Kingsnorth calls his Booker-longlisted fiction debut 'a post-apocalyptic novel set 1000 years in the past'. Written in the author's own version of Old English, the story traces the English guerrilla resistance movement that followed the Norman Conquest.

}}

Paul Kingsnorth refers to his Booker-longlisted fiction debut, ''The Wake'', as 'a post-apocalyptic novel set 1000 years in the past'. This ambitious story traces the three-year Ely resistance movement that followed the Norman Conquest. The guerrilla fighters were led by a figure named Hereward the Wake – thus the title. The first thing any review must note is the language: set in 1066-8, this historical novel is written in what Kingsnorth calls a 'shadow tongue' or 'pseudo-language', not quite the Old English you encountered reading Chaucer or ''Beowulf'' at school, but similar. I would strongly recommend that any diligent reader start by perusing the partial glossary and 'A Note on Language', both appended at the end of the text.