Shocked Earth

Antoinette Fawcett, MA 1977

Shocked Earth, translated by Antoinette Fawcett from Dutch, is an environmental novel set in the Dutch province of Groningen, in the far north-east of the Netherlands. The author is Saskia Goldschmidt.

Femke, her mother Trijn, and her grandfather Zwier, have very different ideas about how to run their family farm. Tensions between the mother and daughter are growing; Femke wants to switch to sustainable growing practices, whilst her mother considers this an attack on tradition. To make matters worse, their home province of Groningen is experiencing a series of earthquakes caused by gas extraction from beneath the ground near their farm. While the cracks and splinters in their farmhouse increase, the authorities and the gas company refuse to offer the local farming community any help.

Shocked Earth investigates what it means to have your identity intensely entwined with your place of birth and your principles at odds with your closest kin. And how to keep standing when the world as you know is slowly falling apart.

Ben Smith, author of Doggerland, has described the novel as a "powerful and moving story of love, loss and determination to look ahead to the future"

Helen Sedgwick, author of The Comet Seekers and When the Dead Come Calling, has said that the novel "exquisitely captures the way our lives and identities are interwoven with the land… and how its destruction will ultimately be our own".

ISBN: 978-1-912235-68-1