Cwen

On a nameless chain of islands off the eastern coast of Britain, women hold the positions of power. They run the civic institutions, decide how the islands' money is spent, manage the businesses and keep the households going, all while teaching the children to believe in a kinder future. Residents call this arrangement a gynotopia, the lifelong project of Eva Levi. Now that Levi has vanished, many expect the experiment to collapse without her.

What they have overlooked is Cwen. She was living on these islands long before the current civilisation arrived, and she has returned to watch over it. The clouds and the tides are her offspring. Her name has roots that reach deep into the soil and stretch across much of the world. For her, the islands have always belonged to women, and she is prepared to go to any lengths to keep them that way.

Through Cwen, the novel explores the nature of female power and potential, and how that power can be used both to protect and to harm. It also asks what identity means in this place: whether we are islanders or mainlanders, migrants or landowners, men or women, people of the past or of the future, or some mix of all of these. It considers how we come to understand the islands we call home.