Splendour cover art

Splendour

A Novel

Pre-order: Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Unlimited access to our all-you-can-listen catalogue of 15K+ audiobooks and podcasts
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Splendour

By: Elizabeth-Jane Burnett
Pre-order: Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Pre-order Now for £12.06

Pre-order Now for £12.06

A moving tale of resistance and renewal, from the acclaimed author of Twelve Words for Moss

Two friends, Kenjo and Leah, swoosh through the lush forests at the edge of their village in Kenya. Imitating hornbills and lying on the mossy boulders that line the river, the young girls are watched over by a canopy of ancient trees, whose roots reach into the past, present and future.

But this glittering countryside is quickly becoming a haunting. As the armed rebellion against the British colonial regime intensifies, the forest is subsumed in a destructive conflict, disturbing the profound balance of life it nourishes and knowledge it preserves. Forced from their homes, the friends are separated by oceans and decades. Like the branches that once sheltered them, they may be twisted and buckled by violence, but they will also, somehow, endure.

This tale of courage, survival and restoration captures the healing – and destructive – power of time and unearths the hidden traces it leaves behind.

© Elizabeth-Jane Burnett 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

Friendship Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Women's Fiction
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_c

Critic reviews

Praise for Twelve Words for Moss
Exquisite, luminous and quietly radical... so electric and so alive. It makes the world more beautiful and dimensional and vibrant... utterly unique and refreshing (Lucy Jones, author of Matrescence )
A fascinating, subtle and risk-taking book (Robert Macfarlane)
Hybridity (of form, subject) is what makes Elizabeth-Jane Burnett's work sing, beguile (Sinéad Gleeson, author of Constellations )
A masterclass in the art of prose writing (Sharon Blackie, author of If Women Rose Rooted )
No reviews yet