Imprint: Windmill Books
Published: 29/01/2015
ISBN: 9780099559368
Length: 352 Pages
Dimensions: 198mm x 21mm x 129mm
Weight: 245g
RRP: £8.99
May 1944: High above the mountains of occupied Slovenia an aeroplane drops three British parachutists – brash MP Major Jack Farwell, radio operator Sid Dixon, and young academic Lieutenant Tom Freedman.
Greeted upon arrival by a group of Partisans, the men are led off into the countryside. Despite the distant crackle of gunfire, the war feels a long way off for Tom. The Partisans, too, are not what he was expecting – courageous, kind, and alluring, especially Jovan, their commander, and the hauntingly beautiful Marija.
As the enemy’s net begins to tighten, they find evidence of massacres, of a dark and terrible band of men pursuing them. As they stumble their way towards a final, tragic battle, so the relationships within the group begin to fray, with Tom finding himself forced to face up to his deepest, most secret desires.
Imprint: Windmill Books
Published: 29/01/2015
ISBN: 9780099559368
Length: 352 Pages
Dimensions: 198mm x 21mm x 129mm
Weight: 245g
RRP: £8.99
"Tim Pears has made the battle zone of family life in provincial England his own fertile fictional terrain…The novel succeeds in illuminating a pivotal moment in world history, while casting a steady light back on England…Rather like Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, this is an intimate tale of a few individuals poised at a moment when one epoch gives way to another."
"[T]he characters are beautifully and economically drawn, and he is excellent on the sights and especially the smells of the landscape – the beauty even of a war-torn land."
"Brilliantly nail-biting. Tim Pears tackles the horrors and ambiguity of war with his usual deft observance, in this depiction of a largely forgotten World War II slideshow in Eastern Europe."
"Superb … a thought provoking, lyrical and deeply humane book"
"Pears’s prose, with its sensuousness and subtlety, is a fine vehicle for the intelligent, unsentimental tale he tells."