Architect / The Crossing (Storycuts)

Two short stories: an architect encounters an emotional crisis that threatens his career; and a mother and her four young children fleeing a warzone attempt a treacherous river crossing.

The daughter of an Australian father and a German mother, Rachel Seiffert was born in Oxford and lives in London. She is the author the Booker-shortlisted novel The Dark Room and an acclaimed collection of short stories, Field Study. She was named one of Granta's 'Best of Young British' and one of 25 women writers to watch in the 'Orange Futures' promotion.

In 'Architect', an architect of rare charm and vision encounters an emotional crisis that threatens his career. When the ensuing strain starts to affect his family relationships, he must rethink his priorities. 
 
In 'The Crossing', a mother and her four young children fleeing a warzone must rely on the assistance of a strange old man as they attempt a treacherous river crossing. 
 
Part of the Storycuts series, these two stories were previously published in the collection Field Study.

Dimitroff (Storycuts)

Jochen's resentment towards his father in Germany confuses his American wife.

When Jochen left his father behind in East Germany he carried his resentment with him. This lingering antipathy intrigues and confuses his American wife, Hannah. When a tentative reconciliation is broached and the family travel to Germany, she embarks upon a pilgrimage with the old man. The two wind up on a snowy corner in East Berlin where a final act of rebellion will be staged. 
 
Part of the Storycuts series, this story was previously published in the collection Field Study.

Dog-Leg Lane (Storycuts)

A young couple find their attempts to move to a new flat thwarted when their three year-old son rebels.

A young couple find their attempts to move to a new flat thwarted when their three year-old son rebels against the idea of leaving the only home he has ever known. It is as difficult to will a connection to dissolve as it is to force one into being. 
 
Part of the Storycuts series, this story was previously published in the collection Field Study.

Field Study (Storycuts)

A student abroad in a post-Commmunist country notices the people's bitterness about the empty promises of their abandoned ideology.

Martin is a graduate student spending a week undertaking scientific field study in a neighbouring, post-Communist country. He sees a residual bitterness among the town's people about the empty promises of an abandoned ideology. Will he allow this bitterness to flavour his own work? 
 
Part of the Storycuts series, this short story was previously published in the collection Field Study.

Francis John Jones, 1924- (Storycuts)

An old man recounts his wartime history.

A PhD student interviews her friend's grandfather for her thesis. While not quite meeting her eyes, he recounts his wartime history, lingering on an excursion that has never been far from his mind. 
 
Part of the Storycuts series, this short story was previously published in the collection Field Study.

Reach (Storycuts)

The connections between us often have strength belying our perceptions.

Alice tacitly agrees with Kim's teachers when they hint that her daughter is not an easy child. A single mother of two, the bond with her second-born didn't present itself readily. 
 
Part of the Storycuts series, this short story was previously published in the collection Field Study.

Second Best (Storycuts)

A young woman crosses a border to earn some money - but is that all?

A young Polish woman has left her son to work as a temporary farm hand across the German border. The prospect of a few weeks' wages is not her only motivation for crossing the border, though. 
 
Part of the Storycuts series, this short story was previously published in the collection Field Study.

The Late Spring (Storycuts)

The arrival of a young boy forces a solitary beekeeper to face the outside world.

The beekeeper has lived in solitude for some fifty years. One day while waiting for Spring to descend he spies a young boy crossing the valley towards the copse where he keeps his hives. With a dependent forced upon him, the beekeeper must face the outside world and all its bewilderments once again. 
 
Part of the Storycuts series, this short story was previously published in the collection Field Study.

Afterwards

The new novel, another remarkable story of the complexities of guilt and moral responsibility, from the Booker-shortlisted author of The Dark Room and Field Study.

Masterful, delightfully controlled prose...This highly engaging novel continues to reveal itself long after it is read

Carefully unsentimental...remarkable...we are given the complicated substance of unadorned lives

Compelling... A daring work, sure to gain her greater recognition..the portrait of the ex-soldier Joseph is as fine a depiction of a man in crisis as you will read

A remarkable feat... precise and searing... One of the most intelligent and ethical writers of her generation

Elegant... Authentic... One of the significant accomplishments of Afterwards is a coiling suspense driven more by psychology than circumstance

[Afterwards] is about invisible borders, the hard-held Irish border, the border between lovers, between generations, between past and present. It is a fine and profound work

Seiffert returns to many of the themes of her first novel, The Dark Room: guilt, grief, memory and forgetting. But Afterwards also asks the questions about how much people can really know about the people they love

Superb...the drama is balanced and the tension sustained...masterful

Readers who wonder why... Martin Amis and... Kiran Desai seem to flinch from writing about their own times should study Ms Seiffert

Rachel Seiffert is the poet and spokeswoman of those who find themselves on the wrong side of history...powerful, almost unbearably intense and wonderfully written

Despite the halting, low-key narration as Joe and Alice attempt to piece together the terms of their engagement, a simmering tension builds, though Seiffert is admirably less concerned with the revelation of atrocities than in how the soldier, having breached the first commandment, negotiates a return to ordinary life

The daughter of an Australian father and a German mother, Rachel Seiffert was born in Oxford and lives in London. She is the author the Booker-shortlisted novel The Dark Room and an acclaimed collection of short stories, Field Study. She was named one of Granta's 'Best of Young British' and one of 25 women writers to watch in the 'Orange Futures' promotion.

To love someone, need you know everything about them? 
 
When Alice and Joseph meet, they fall quickly into a tentative but serious relationship. Both are still young and hopeful of each other, but each brings with them an emotional burden. Alice's family is full of absences and Joseph harbours an unspeakable secret from his time in the army in Northern Ireland. 
 
When Alice's widowed grandfather begins to tell Joseph about his RAF experiences in 1950s Kenya, something still raw is tapped in Joseph; his reaction to the older man's unburdening of guilt is both unexpected and devastating for them all.

Field Study

'Contains vast themes of war and kinship, grief and terror, love and trust. This is the short story at its best' - Sunday Times

A magnificent collection: striking, moving, and deeply thought-provoking

Seiffert is a writer of great delicacy and toughness...good story begetting good story after good story

It is extraordinary to experience these fictions... Not even the achievement of The Dark Room, its maturity and courage, will quite prepare the reader for the subtle art at work throughout these stories

'The Crossing' has all the leanness of Hemingway's short fiction... In Seiffert's hands, the tale becomes a tense parable set at the dangerous intersection of trust, desperation and xenophobia

Rachel Seiffer's short stories excel at depicting the awkwardness and confusions of life...and all are created with the same confidence and skill she showed in her Booker nominated novel The Dark Room

Skillfully constructed... It's rare to meet such an unwriterly writer. Especially one who does it so well

Captivating... Because Seiffert writes without judgment or sympathy, her flawed characters are all the more compelling

Whether they are Polish emigrés or hoary World War I veteran's, Seiffert's cast walks the knife's edge of history... It takes an agile mind and dexterous prose to invoke such weighty chunks of history in short fiction

The daughter of an Australian father and a German mother, Rachel Seiffert was born in Oxford and lives in London. She is the author the Booker-shortlisted novel The Dark Room - which won a Betty Trask Award and the Los Angeles Times' Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction - and the novel Afterwards. She was named one of Granta's 'Best of Young British' and one of 25 women writers to watch in the 'Orange Futures' promotion.

Rachel Seiffert, author of The Dark Room, powerfully evokes our need for human connection in this brilliant and haunting group of stories. From the title piece, in which a young biologist conceals his discoveries at a polluted river from a local woman, to the family aided by an enemy in 'The Crossing', to the old man weighing his regrets in 'Francis John Jones, 1924 -' Seiffert's acclaimed, refined prose movingly captures the lives of her characters in their most essential, secret moments. 
 
A Rocky Mountain News Best Book of the Year.

World War 2 Fiction

The Dark Room

'An important book, a powerful commentary on the moral issues of the last century with the realisation that no one is completely blameless - extraordinary' Sunday Express

Intensely observed debut… Perfectly balanced

A startlingly powerful debut... Not to be missed

Ambitious and powerful... Seiffert writes lean, clean prose. Deftly, she hangs large ideas on the vivid private experiences of her principal characters.... Poignant - and ultimately optimistic... Engrossing

What a bold book... Compelling... Challenging and substantial

Guilt, shame, responsibility, new beginnings, the individual in history - these are Seiffert's subjects, conveyed in a style of deceptive simplicity... Provocative and accomplished

Explores the experience of "ordinary" Germans...the descendants of Nazis and Nazi sympathizers...and poses questions about the country's psychological and political inheritance with rare insight and humanity

A stunning trilogy of linked stories about the Holocaust. Seiffert's book reminds me of Bernard Schlink's The Reader, but unlike that fascinating and intellectually provocative discussion about complicity and collective guilt, The Dark Room never veers away from its fictional roots... It doesn't read like a first novel

Excellent...a very readable, imaginative attempt to hold essential truths in living memory

The hopelessness of love and passion during one of history's darkest hours is gently eked out... Questions of identity, loyalty and secrets are unavoidable, whether they stand uniformed and proud or lie hidden in a photo album. The Dark Room offers a haunting perspective on the ripples the most extraordinary of actions can cause. Seiffert is sparing with historical specifics, crafting the tale so lovingly that the most affecting moments lie in words unspoken and truths untold

The daughter of a German mother and an Australian father, Rachel Seiffert has spent most of her life in Oxford and Glasgow. She now lives in Berlin.

The Dark Room tells the stories of three ordinary Germans: Helmut, a young photographer in Berlin in the 1930s who uses his craft to express his patriotic fervour; Lore, a twelve-year-old girl who in 1945 guides her young siblings across a devastated Germany after her Nazi parents are seized by the Allies; and, fifty years later, Micha, a young teacher obsessed with what his loving grandfather did in the war, struggling to deal with the past of his family and his country.

Rachel Seiffert

In 'Blue', Kenny sets about furnishing and decorating his first flat. However, his giddiness does not last long. Even as his family and friends aid him in the feathering of his nest his worries mount higher and higher, and a young pregnant girl is always on his mind. 
 
In 'Tentsmuir Sands', a family outing to the Scottish seaside yields an early lesson in mortality for the youngest member. This honest and delicate tale presents an image of family life that is both sweet and ephemeral. 
 
Part of the Storycuts series, these two stories were previously published in the collection Field Study.

Rachel Seiffert

Books by Rachel Seiffert

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