Ash before Oak is a novel in the form of a fictional journal written by a solitary man on a secluded Somerset estate. Ostensibly a nature diary, chronicling the narrator’s interest in the local flora and fauna and the passing of the seasons, Ash before Oak is also the story of a breakdown told slantwise, and of the narrator’s subsequent recovery through his reengagement with the world around him. Written in prose that is as precise as it is beautiful, winner of the 2018 Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize, Jeremy Cooper’s first novel in over a decade is a stunning investigation of the fragility, beauty and strangeness of life.

‘Very moving, beautiful and so thoughtful too – a wonderful evocation of animals and birds, sky and Somerset.’ — Kate Mosse, author of Labyrinth

‘Low-key and understated, this beautiful book ... is a civilised and melancholy document that slowly progresses towards a sense of enduring, going onwards, and even new life. It feels like a healing experience.’  — Phil Baker, The Sunday Times

'The narrator of Ash Before Oak, who's unadorned diary entries we seem to be reading, suffers from depresion that at times renders him suicidal. At the limit of his psychic fragility he attempts to make a home for himself and others, both human and more than. His ambition is to occupy an old dilapidated farmhouse and its surrounding land with the utmost gentleness. The delicacy of his gestures of home-making is reflected in the straightforwardness of the prose that recounts them. Although motivated by a very personal need and taste, his is also an attitude that  points to a larger ethico-political  concern with how to live more sustainably and light'.  — Swen Steinhauser, Jot Bookshop & Journal