Set amid the rolling hills and the sandy shingle beaches of coastal Sussex, this disquieting novel depicts an England in which bland conformity is the terrifying order of the day. Violent gangs roam the country destroying art and culture, and brutalising those who resist the purge. As the menacing band of dissidents creep ever closer, a loosely connected group of artists, writers and musicians attempt to evade the chilling mobs, but it’s only a matter of time until their luck runs out.

Winner of the 1977 South-East Arts Literature Prize, They is an uncanny and prescient vision of a world hostile to beauty, emotion, and the individual.

“A creepily prescient tale in which anonymous mobs target artists and destroy their art for the crime of individual vision. Insidiously horrifying!” – Margaret Atwood

“Spare, troubling, eerily familiar… occupying a space between dystopia and horror" – Carmen Maria Machado, Guardian

“Supple with dread” – Sam Knight, The New Yorker

“[A] disquieting, lean, pared-back dystopian tale... chilling, but compellingly so” – Lucy Scholes, Paris Review

“Kay Dick’s mind is a delicate instrument, aware, sensitive, intelligent, alive to every shade of feeling and sensation” – L. P. Hartley, The Sunday Times

“Strong stuff, beautifully written, to make a man look behind him in fear and dread when walking down a leafy lane” – Philip Howard, The Times