Waterland, by Graham Swift

First published in 1983, Graham Swift’s multilayered chronicle set in the Cambridgeshire Fens is widely regarded as one of the finest British novels of the 1980s. Tom Crick is a history teacher, but the history that absorbs him is his own and his family’s. The past, with its secrets and oddities, hangs heavy on him, pushing him towards a heartbreaking new crisis in his life. Swift’s powerful psychological drama takes in life and death, betrayal and compassion; his setting, the brooding landscape of the marshy Fens, is utterly compelling.