My most recent novel, The Glass Field is available from all major booksellers:
In 1986, with Chernobyl smouldering on the news and the Cold War casting a deep shadow, Scott becomes convinced that nuclear conflict is inevitable. Sensitive, watchful, and haunted by personal grief, he immerses himself in post-apocalyptic stories and survival games, drawn to the clarity they offer when the future feels out of control.
Jodie is brilliant, abrasive, damaged. Fiercely determined to keep the world at arm’s length, she wears loneliness like armour, trusting her solitude to protect her.
Drawn together by their fears, Jodie and Scott form an uneasy, wary alliance. But the closer they become, the more it seems that preparing for World War Three together may be their only chance to survive the personal apocalypses that are already engulfing them.
The Glass Field is an intimate, quietly unsettling novel about what we cling to when the world feels close to breaking.
PRAISE FOR EARLIER WORK
“Spellbinding… deftly demonstrates that what lives vividly in one person’s memory can be erased or deeply buried in another’s”
– The New York Times Book Review
“Ambitious and substantial… This is a novel about first secrets, about childhood’s privacy and discovery. Burt’s great talent is to recapture their freshness and power”
– The Guardian
Read the opening of The Glass Field here:
If you’re reading this in a book club or reading group, feel free to get in touch.
Earlier novels
When I returned to novel-writing with The Glass Field, it was after 25 years as a screenwriter. But before that, my career began with novels: in the 1990s I had three books published with Transworld (UK) and Ballantine (US).
My debut novel, After the Hole, was published in 1993 and subsequently filmed as The Hole, starring Thora Birch and Keira Knightley.
Sophie, a psychological drama, was published in 1994.
The Dandelion Clock, a literary fiction novel exploring loss and love, was published in 1999. The US edition was titled A Clock Without Hands.