A 19th-century whaling ship sets sail for the Arctic with a killer aboard in this dark, sharp and highly original tale that grips like a thriller.

Behold the man. Stinking, drunk, brutal and bloodthirsty, Henry Drax is a harpooner on the 'Volunteer', a Yorkshire whaling ship that is due to set sail for the rich hunting waters of the Arctic Circle. Also aboard for the first time is Patrick Sumner, an ex-army surgeon with a shattered reputation, no money and no better option than to embark as ship's medic on this violent, filthy, ill-fated voyage.

In India during the Siege of Delhi, Sumner thought he had experienced the depths to which a man can stoop and imagined he'd find temporary respite on the 'Volunteer', but now, trapped in the wooden belly of the ship with Drax, he encounters pure evil and is forced to act. As the true purposes of the expedition become clear, the confrontation between the two men plays out in the freezing darkness of an arctic winter.

Ian McGuire is the author of The North Water published by Henry Holt in March 2016. Ian grew up in East Yorkshire, and studied at the University of Manchester in England and the University of Virginia in the United States. He is the co-founder and co-director of the University of Manchester's Centre for New Writing. He has published short stories in The Paris Review, The Chicago Review and elsewehere. The North Water is his second novel.