Winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize for fiction, The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud is a haunting and exact meditation on memory and mortality, and marks the entrance of a major new literary talent.

Click the cover to read an extract:

‘Skibsrud’s beautiful first novel is subtle, sharp and truthful.’

Kate Saunders, Times

‘The Sentimentalists is a writer’s book: lyrical, thoughtful…compulsively readable…A moving testament to the fragility of stories we tell about ourselves.’ 

Adrian Turpin, Financial Times

‘Johanna Skibsrud’s The Sentimentalists has many excellent attributes but the best may be the persistent proposal that one can never know anything, certainly in regard to relationships with those one loves’ 

Hugh Macdonald, Herald

‘One of the many impressive things about this novel is its density. By this I mean that the author has managed with considerable economy to fill in the background to her characters’ lives while keeping their present and immediate thoughts, feelings, hopes and fears in the foreground. We are with them in the here and now, but always made aware of the there and then … Remarkably accomplished for a first novel, not likely to be quickly forgotten.’

Allan Massie, Scotsman

‘It was with no small surge of recognition that I read Johanna Skibsrud’s deeply moving The Sentimentalists … As an objective reader, I was engrossed by the elegant plotting and intelligent writing, by the questing after a truth that would never be found. As the adult son of a Vietnam veteran, I was, simply, moved to tears.’ 

Patrick Ness, Guardian

‘A mature poetic novel.’

Waterstones Books Quarterly

‘If you liked Nicole Krauss’s latest book Great House, chances are you’ll get on with this award-winning debut from Canada … Skibsrud has the knack of bringing things into striking sharp focus … her dense, haunting novel … impresses.’

Stephanie Cross, Daily Mail

‘An outstanding novel born of the horror of Vietnam … The Sentimentalists is an allusive, intelligent and solemn work that articulates one man’s horror and the way it became a communal lamentation.’ Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

‘There are heart-stoppingly vivid and affecting scenes.’

Hannah McGill, Scotland on Sunday

‘A probing exploration - now subtle, oblique, now forensic, scalpel-sharp - of the ramifications of a person’s experience through the lives and relationships of those he loves. Of the way in which what we do, and witness, echoes through our lives, and the next generation’s.’

Tim Pears

‘Johanna Skibsrud’s remarkable debut is a novel at once lyrical and frank, the resonantly layered portrait of a man, a family and a place that will stay with you long after you read the last page.’

Claire Messud