The Winter Vault

The long-awaited novel from the Orange Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author of Fugitive Pieces.

Egypt, 1964. The great temple at Abu Simbel must be dismantled and resurrected high above the rising waters of the Aswan Dam. This daunting task is overseen by Avery, a young engineer who, at the same time, is carefully building a life with his new wife, Jean. But not everything can be saved once the floodgates have opened: villages will be deluged, thousands will be exiled from their homes, and graves will be moved. And when Avery and Jean suffer a terrible loss of their own, they begin their separate journeys through the landscape of grief. Weaving historical moments with the quiet intimacy of human lives, The Winter Vault is the story of a husband and a wife trying to find their way back to each other; of people and nations displaced; and of the myriad means by which we all seek out a place to call home.

Anne Michaels is the author of three collections of poetry: The Weight of Oranges, which won the Commonwealth Prize for the Americas; Miner's Pond, which won the Canadian Authors Association Award and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award and the Trillium Award; and Skin Divers. Her first novel, Fugitive Pieces, was published by Bloomsbury in 1997 to worldwide critical acclaim. It won the Orange Prize and the Guardian First Book Award among others, and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Canadian Booksellers Association Author of the Year Award. It was also made into a major motion picture. Anne Michaels has also composed music for the theatre. Born in 1958, Anne Michaels lives in Toronto.