The Center for Fiction Presents Andrew Miller on The Land in Winter with Susan Choi

Thursday, 7:00 pm EDT October 22, 2026

The Center for Fiction
& Livestreamed

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Join Andrew Miller at the first North American event for his Booker-shortlisted novel, The Land in Winter. Miller, the acclaimed author of Oxygen, brings his signature blend of historical insight and compassion to this unforgettable tale set against the backdrop of the Big Freeze of 1963—one of the harshest UK winters in living memory.

Set in a village deep in the English countryside, The Land in Winter follows two neighboring couples. Local doctor Eric Parry begins his rounds in the village while his pregnant wife, Irene, stays in their cottage, mulling over the space that has grown between them. On the farm nearby, witty-but-troubled Rita Simmons is also expecting, her head still swimming with images of a raucous past that her husband, Bill, prefers to forget. Soon, the ordinary cold of December gives way to violent blizzards and secret resentments implode, forcing all four people to reckon with their feelings of isolation, dimming affection, and unfulfilled expectations.

Susan Choi, author of the National Book Award-winning Trust Exercise and the Booker-shortlisted Flashlight, will join Miller to reflect on how fiction deepens our understanding of solitude, loneliness, and human connection.

We offer two in-person ticket options: the $10 Standard Ticket and the $40+ Supporter Ticket. Both provide the same access, but if you’re able, we kindly suggest registering for the Supporter Ticket to help sustain our programs. Please note that tickets do not include books; we encourage you to order in advance online or purchase copies at the event.

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Featuring

  • Miller, Andrew-headshot 2 cr. Linda Nylind

    Andrew Miller

    Andrew Miller

    Andrew Miller’s first novel, Ingenious Pain, was published by Sceptre in 1997; it won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for the best foreign novel published in Italy. It has been followed by Casanova, Oxygen, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award in 2001, The Optimists, One Morning Like a Bird, Pure, which won the Costa Book of the Year Award in 2011, The Crossing, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free, The Slowworm’s Song and The Land in Winter, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and won the Winston Graham Historical Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2025. Andrew Miller’s novels have been published in translation in twenty countries. Born in Bristol in 1960, he currently lives in Somerset.


    Photo Credit: Linda Nylind

  • Susan Choi Headshot

    Susan Choi

    Susan Choi

    Susan Choi is the author most recently of Flashlight, shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, long listed for the 2025 National Book Award, and named a Best Book of the Year by the Guardian, the Economist, the Financial Times, the New Yorker, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, among others. Her previous novels are The Foreign Student, American Woman, A Person of Interest, My Education, and Trust Exercise, which received the 2019 National Book Award for fiction. She teaches in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Brooklyn, New York.


    Photo Credit: Laura Bianchi

Featured Book

  1. . 
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    The Land in Winter

    By Andrew Miller

    Published by Europa Editions

    PURCHASE

    December 1962: In a village deep in the English countryside, two neighboring couples begin the day. Local doctor Eric Parry commences his rounds in the village while his pregnant wife, Irene, wanders the rooms of their old house, mulling over the space that has grown between the two of them.

    On the farm nearby lives Irene’s mirror image: witty but troubled Rita Simmons is also expecting. She spends her days trying on the idea of being a farmer’s wife, but her head still swims with images of a raucous past that her husband, Bill, prefers to forget.

    When Rita and Irene meet across the bare field between their houses, a clock starts. There is still affection in both their homes; neither marriage has yet to be abandoned. But when the ordinary cold of December gives way—ushering in violent blizzards of the harshest winter in living memory—so do the secret resentments harbored in all four lives.

    An exquisite, page-turning examination of relationships, The Land in Winter is a masterclass in storytelling—proof yet again that Andrew Miller is one of the most dazzling chroniclers of the human heart.

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