Just before we went into lockdown, I was reading To Siberia by Per Petterson, undisputed master of the long, intricate interweaving sentence and a true painter of atmospheric Nordic bleak landscapes. In classic Petterson fashion, this is a mesmerising and haunting book set in Danish Jutland at the time of the second world war, a book of winter and ice and snow and dark freezing nights where a young girl dreams of adventures far away in the land of Siberia and her brother Jasper longs for the warm exotic air and sounds and scents of Morocco. To Siberia is a poignant, beautiful and ultimately heart-breaking tale off rural isolation and the ties that bind in the shadow and aftermath of war. I can still feel it in my bones.