Five Weeks in the Country
A Novel
Will be published approx. on 18. June 2026
Book
Hardback
304 pages
978-0-06-341181-4 (ISBN)
Description
From the acclaimed, award-winning author of Reading Like a Writer and Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris, 1932 comes an utterly original novel inspired by the strange friendship between Charles Dickens and Hans Christian Andersen and set during the summer when Dickens's family life exploded.
In the summer of 1857, when British newspapers warned of an approaching comet about to destroy the earth, an unusual-looking stranger arrived at Charles Dickens's home, Gad's Hill, in the countryside outside London. Dickens had met Hans Christian Andersen at a dinner party, a decade before, and, in a moment of desperation, had invited him to visit.
The visit did not go well. The eccentric Danish author of classic fairy tales, who barely spoke English, outstayed his welcome and alienated the Dickens household, which included nine children. Even the oblivious, obsessively self-conscious Andersen sensed the increasing tension between Dickens and his unhappy wife, Catherine, but was slow to understand-or to believe-that Dickens had fallen in love with a young actress appearing in his new play. For Andersen, those five weeks were a series of social mistakes and embarrassments but ultimately a lesson in how life's most humbling experiences can be transformed into art.
Five Weeks in the Country, a work of imaginative fiction inspired by actual events, is Francine Prose at her dazzling best.
In the summer of 1857, when British newspapers warned of an approaching comet about to destroy the earth, an unusual-looking stranger arrived at Charles Dickens's home, Gad's Hill, in the countryside outside London. Dickens had met Hans Christian Andersen at a dinner party, a decade before, and, in a moment of desperation, had invited him to visit.
The visit did not go well. The eccentric Danish author of classic fairy tales, who barely spoke English, outstayed his welcome and alienated the Dickens household, which included nine children. Even the oblivious, obsessively self-conscious Andersen sensed the increasing tension between Dickens and his unhappy wife, Catherine, but was slow to understand-or to believe-that Dickens had fallen in love with a young actress appearing in his new play. For Andersen, those five weeks were a series of social mistakes and embarrassments but ultimately a lesson in how life's most humbling experiences can be transformed into art.
Five Weeks in the Country, a work of imaginative fiction inspired by actual events, is Francine Prose at her dazzling best.
Reviews / Votes
"No one states problems more correctly, more astutely, more amusingly and more uncomfortably than Francine Prose . . . Her insights, the subtle ones and the two-by-fours, make me shake my head in despair, in surprise, in heartfelt agreement. The gift of her work to a reader is to create for us what she creates for her protagonist: the subtle unfolding, the moment-by-moment process of discovery as we read and change, from not knowing and even not wanting to know or care, to seeing what we had not seen and finding our way to the light of the ending." - New York Times Book Review on The Vixen"Masterful. . . . a lovely tribute to the transformative value of imagination." - Washington Post on Mr. Monkey
"Remarkable. . . . [Prose] is the Meryl Streep of literary fiction, convincingly shifting between multiple voices and points of view-not just from book to book, but within a single work." - NPR on Mr. Monkey
"Prose's first memoir makes something dark and dizzying of a tumultuous decade." - New York magazine on 1974
"A rollicking trickster of a novel, wondrously funny and wickedly addictive." - Maria Semple, New York Times bestselling author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette
"Combining elements of mystery and romance, Prose's novel is a sly indictment of Cold War paranoia." - The New Yorker
"In this wonderfully clear-sighted memoir Francine Prose catches a moment when idealism shifted and the world turned. 1974 is also a story about youth, risk and survival-a story women don't tell often enough, perhaps. Wise, achieved, entirely satisfying." - Anne Enright, author of The Wren, the Wren
"Francine Prose's sublime, haunting memoir shows us the Seventies in all its dizzying contradictions-the darkness and paranoia, the open roads and strange new connections. A world where some voices disintegrated, never to cohere again-while others emerged, brilliant and searing, out of the calamity. Poignant, mesmerizing, profound-1974 offers revelations not just about the Seventies but about our world today." - Danzy Senna, author of Caucasia and New People
"(A) madcap, razor-sharp comedy." - People
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
HarperCollins Publishers Inc
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 160 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
490 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-06-341181-4 (9780063411814)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
05/2026
HarperCollins
€20.42
Available for download
Person
Francine Prose is the author of twenty-two works of fiction including the highly acclaimed The Vixen; Mister Monkey; the New York Times bestseller Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932; A Changed Man, which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her works of nonfiction include the highly praised 1974: A Person History, Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer, which has become a classic. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director's Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College.