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What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
FROM THE AUTHOR OF EXPECTATION
The Brooke family are gathering in their eighteenth-century ancestral home – twenty bedrooms of carved Sussex sandstone – to bury Philip: husband, father and the blinding sun around which they have all orbited for as long as they can remember.
Frannie, inheritor of a thousand acres of English countryside, has dreams of rewilding and returning the estate to nature: a last line of defence against the coming climate catastrophe. Milo envisages a treetop haven for the super-rich where, under the influence of psychedelic drugs, a new ruling class will be reborn. Each believes their father has given them his blessing, setting them on a collision course with each other.
Isa has long suspected that her father thought only of himself, and hopes to seek out her childhood love, who still lives on the estate, to discover whether it is her feelings for him that are creating the fault lines in her marriage.
And then there is Clara, who arrives in their midst from America, shrouded in secrets and bearing a truth that will fracture all the dreams on which they’ve built their lives.
'Superb … Anna Hope engages, head-on, with some of the most urgent and challenging issues facing the world today, and transforms them into spellbinding family drama' Jonathan Coe
‘Beautiful . . . As provocative as it is tender’ Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace
‘The English country house novel reimagined for our times ... Exceptionally well-drawn’ Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground
‘A book that asks important questions about legacy – familial, historical and global – and which seeks to answer them with delicate insight and beautiful prose’ Elizabeth Day
‘Hauntingly beautiful . . . This is a novel I will return to again and again’ Louisa Adjoa Parker
‘Albion balances the reality of who the English were against the hope of who we might become’ Richard Beard, author of The Day That Went Missing
© Anna Hope 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025
Critics Review
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Hope breathes fresh thinking into the dusty corners and overgrown hedges of the English country house dilemma - without telling the reader what to think ... I closed Albion with a delicious sense of uncertainty
Sunday Times
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At once a sumptuous family drama and state-of-the-nation novel, it's a triumphant read
The i, best books out in May
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Albion is exquisitely put together, with a tight structure and richly drawn characters
Literary Review
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There are shades of both Succession and Saltburn at play here, with Albion promising more of the emotional acuity that Anna Hope wielded so well in 2019’s Expectation
Independent – The best books to look out for in 2025
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A superb novel deftly woven around themes of class, national identity and environmental collapse. In Albion Anna Hope engages, head-on, with some of the most urgent and challenging issues facing the world today, and transforms them into spellbinding family drama
Jonathan Coe, author of Middle England
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Anna Hope’s beautiful new novel Albion explores the complexities of family, trauma, nature, human nature, landscape and escape in language that is as provocative as it is tender
Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace
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Her finest to date...With shades of Brideshead, as well as Elizabeth Jane Howard’s memorable Cazalet Chronicles, Albion is a welcome addition to the body of literature centred around inherited wealth, ancestral homes, and difficult family dynamics
John Boyne, Irish Times
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If you like dysfunctional families and grand English country houses - who doesn’t, frankly? people in idyllic settings having unenviable times is so compelling - then this is for you
India Knight, HOME substack
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The English country house novel re-imagined for our times: an exceptionally well-drawn portrait of a battling family, which also astutely wrestles with the issues around rewilding, inheritance, and colonialism
Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground
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A book that asks important questions about legacy - familial, historical and global - and which seeks to answer them with delicate insight and beautiful prose
Elizabeth Day
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Anna Hope
- Narrator
- Anna Hope
- Duration
- 12 hours 33 minutes
- Release Date
- 1 May 2025
- ISBN
- 9781405980401
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Penguin Books Ltd
- Genre
- Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Family life fiction / Stories about family, Narrative theme: environmental issues / the natural world, Narrative theme: love / relationships, Narrative theme: sense of place, Narrative theme: death, grief, loss
Synopsis
Brought to you by Penguin.FROM THE AUTHOR OF EXPECTATIONThe Brooke family are gathering in their eighteenth-century ancestral home – twenty bedrooms of carved Sussex sandstone – to bury Philip: husband, father and the blinding sun around which they have all orbited for as long as they can remember.Frannie, inheritor of a thousand acres of English countryside, has dreams of rewilding and returning the estate to nature: a last line of defence against the coming climate catastrophe. Milo envisages a treetop haven for the super-rich where, under the influence of psychedelic drugs, a new ruling class will be reborn. Each believes their father has given them his blessing, setting them on a collision course with each other.Isa has long suspected that her father thought only of himself, and hopes to seek out her childhood love, who still lives on the estate, to discover whether it is her feelings for him that are creating the fault lines in her marriage.And then there is Clara, who arrives in their midst from America, shrouded in secrets and bearing a truth that will fracture all the dreams on which they’ve built their lives.'Superb … Anna Hope engages, head-on, with some of the most urgent and challenging issues facing the world today, and transforms them into spellbinding family drama' Jonathan Coe‘Beautiful . . . As provocative as it is tender’ Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace‘The English country house novel reimagined for our times ... Exceptionally well-drawn’ Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground‘A book that asks important questions about legacy – familial, historical and global – and which seeks to answer them with delicate insight and beautiful prose’ Elizabeth Day‘Hauntingly beautiful . . . This is a novel I will return to again and again’ Louisa Adjoa Parker‘Albion balances the reality of who the English were against the hope of who we might become’ Richard Beard, author of The Day That Went Missing© Anna Hope 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025
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