A haunting novel about art and its power to heal, J.L. Carr's A Month in the Country published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 'That night, for the first time during many months, I slept like the dead and, next morning, awoke very early.'One summer, just after the Great War, Tom Birkin, a demobbed soldier, arrives in the village of Oxgodby.He has been invited to uncover and restore a medieval wall painting in the local church.At the same time, Charles Moon - a fellow damaged survivor of the war - has been asked to locate the grave of a village ancestor.As these two outsiders go about their work of recovery, they form a bond, but they also stir up long dormant passions within the village.What Berkin discovers here will stay with him for the rest of his life . . .