A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2024
A BBC BEST BOOK OF 2024

In thirteenth-century Ireland, a woman with power is a woman to be feared.

When a young Alice Kyteler sees her mother wither under the constraints of family responsibilities, she vows that she won't suffer the same fate. Soon Alice discovers she has a flair for making money, and builds a flourishing business. But as her wealth and stature grow, so too do the rumours about her private life. By the time she has moved on to her fourth husband, a blaze of local gossip and resentment culminates in an accusation that could prove fatal.

Inspired by the first recorded person in Ireland to have been condemned as a witch, Bright I Burn gives voice to a woman lost to history, who dared to carve her own space in a man's world.

Prizes

Short-listed for RSL Encore Award 2025 (UK)

Mesmerising . . . An imaginative, very stylishly written and entertaining book * * Irish Times * *
Extraordinary . . . Some of the best prose I've read -- ELAINE FEENEY
Gripping * * NEW YORKER * *
Filled with spirit - every sentence is a work of art. Completely unputdownable -- LUCY ROSE
An incredible medieval life rendered in incandescent flashes * * Kirkus * *
Vividly recreates medieval Ireland, its challenges and customs, its increasingly influential clergy, its gossiping townspeople. There's an ever-encroaching sense of death and violence, whether in the harsh natural world or the brutal world of men. Amid this, Alice is a driven and often ruthless woman * * Irish Times * *
Spellbinding witch literature . . . A stunning rendition of one fierce Irish woman's voice pitted against the patriarchal power constructs of Medieval Ireland -- ANYA BERGMAN
Aitken is a distinct, singular, stunning voice in historical fiction, and Bright I Burn is a triumph. It took my breath away -- JENNY MUSTARD
A gorgeous, blazing novel, that makes history crackle to life. Fans of Maggie Farrell's Hamnet or A.K. Blakemore's The Manningtree Witches will love Aitken's complex, sensual anti-heroine -- CLARE POLLARD
I was captivated. Every sentence reads like poetry. A stunning, magical, beguiling book -- HUMA QURESHI

Molly Aitken was born in Scotland and brought up in Ireland. Her short fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, for which she won the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction 2023, Banshee, and has been dramatized for BBC Radio 4. Her first novel The Island Child was longlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award. Molly is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing and History at Sheffield Hallam University.

@MollyAitken1 | @molly.aitken