RE4DINGS: Doggerland by Ben Smith

RE4DINGS [ˈri dɪŋz]: a regular video series from 4th Estate, in which our authors read 1 to 4 pages of their choice from their latest book. You heard it here first.

In the North Sea, far from what remains of the coastline, a wind farm stretches for thousands of acres.

The Boy, who is no longer really a boy, and the Old Man, whose age is unguessable, are charged with its maintenance. They carry out their never-ending work as the waves roll, dragging strange shoals of flotsam through the turbine fields. Land is only a memory.

So too is the Boy’s father, who worked on the turbines before him, and disappeared.

The boy has been sent by the Company to take his place, but the question of where he went and why is one for which the Old Man will give no answer.

As the Old Man dredges the sea for lost things, the Boy sifts for the truth of his missing father. Until one day, from the limitless water, a plan for escape emerges…

Doggerland is a haunting and beautifully compelling story of loneliness and hope, nature and survival