Moving in slow but deliberate concentric circles, “They” root out free-thinking subversives: the surviving artists, craftspeople, intellectuals, even the unmarried and the childless. But this rustic tranquility is punctuated by bursts of menace as they must continually flee a faceless oppressor, an organization known only as “They,” whose supporters range the countryside in a grisly mob of mostly mute, quasi-automatons.

Published to some acclaim in 1977 but swiftly forgotten, Kay Dick's They follows a nameless, genderless narrator living along the lush but decimated English coast, where a loose cohort of cultural refugees live meditative, artistic, often polyamorous lives. The radical dystopian classic, lost for forty years, with an introduction by Carmen Maria Machado. 'A masterpiece of creeping dread.' -Emily St John Mandel The signature of an enchantress.' -Edna O’Brien “Lush, strange, hypnotic, compulsive.” -Eimear McBride “I'm pretty wild about this paranoid, terrifying 1977 masterpiece.” -Lauren Groff Insidiously horrifying!” -Margaret Atwood (via Twitter) “A masterwork of English pastoral horror.” -Claire-Louise Bennett 'Prophetic, chilling and a reminder from the past that we have everything to fight for in the future.Publisher ‏ : ‎ Knopf Canada (Feb. 'A short shocker: creepy, disturbing, distressing and highly enjoyable.' Andrew Hunter Murray. 'A masterwork of English pastoral horror: eerie and bewitching.' Claire-Louise Bennett. A reminder of where groupthink leads.' Eimear McBride, Completely got under my skin.' Kiran Millwood Hargrave, 'Deft, dread filled, hypnotic and hopeful. 'I'm pretty wild about this paranoid, terrifying 1977 masterpiece.' Lauren Groff The signature of an enchantress.' Edna O'Brien. 'Every bit as creepy, tense and strange as when I first read it 40 years ago.' Ian Rankin'Delicious and sexy and downright chilling. Lost for half a century, newly introduced by Carmen Maria Machado, Kay Dick's They (1977) is a rediscovered dystopian masterpiece of art under attack: a cry from the soul against censorship, a radical celebration of non-conformity - and a warning. Survivors gather together as cultural refugees, preserving their crafts, creating, loving and remembering. THEY capture dissidents - writers, painters, musicians, even the unmarried and childless - in military sweeps, 'curing' these subversives of individual identity. Soon the National Gallery is purged eerie towers survey the coast mobs stalk the countryside destroying artworks - and those who resist. THEY begin with a dead dog, shadowy footsteps, confiscated books. John Mandel This is Britain: but not as we know it. Insidiously horrifying!' Margaret Atwood'A masterpiece of creeping dread.' Emily St.

As heard on BBC Radio 4's Front Row: the radical dystopian classic, lost for forty years: in a nightmarish Britain, THEY are coming closer.

They by Kay Dick