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Books > Fiction > Genre fiction > War fiction > Second World War fiction
BY THE AUTHOR OF THE DOOR, ONE OF NYTBR'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF 2015 **
WINNER OF THE 2018 PEN TRANSLATION PRIZE ** ** SHORTLISTED FOR THE
WARWICK WOMEN IN TRANSLATION PRIZE 2019 ** "Extraordinary" New York
Times "Quite unforgettable" Daily Telegraph "Unusual, piercing . .
. oddly percipient" Irish Times "A gorgeous elegy" Publishers
Weekly "A brightly shining star in the Szabo universe" World
Literature Today In prewar Budapest three families live side by
side on gracious Katalin Street, their lives closely intertwined. A
game is played by the four children in which Balint, the promising
son of the Major, invariably chooses Iren Elekes, the headmaster's
dutiful elder daughter, over her younger sister, the scatterbrained
Blanka, and little Henriette Held, the daughter of the Jewish
dentist. Their lives are torn apart in 1944 by the German
occupation, which only the Elekes family survives intact. The
postwar regime relocates them to a cramped Soviet-style apartment
and they struggle to come to terms with social and political
change, personal loss, and unstated feelings of guilt over the
deportation of the Held parents and the death of little Henriette,
who had been left in their protection. But the girl survives in a
miasmal afterlife, and reappears at key moments as a mute witness
to the inescapable power of past events. As in The Door and Iza's
Ballad, Magda Szabo conducts a clear-eyed investigation into the
ways in which we inflict suffering on those we love. Katalin
Street, which won the 2007 Prix Cevennes for Best European novel,
is a poignant, sombre, at times harrowing book, but beautifully
conceived and truly unforgettable. Translated from the Hungarian by
Len Rix
***BEST CRIME BOOKS OF 2021 - THE TIMES/SUNDAY TIMES*** ***CRIME
BOOK OF THE MONTH - THE TIMES*** 'Savage, beautiful, mesmeric...a
very special book.' CHRIS WHITAKER, AUTHOR OF WE BEGIN AT THE END
'Extraordinary...a career-defining performance.' THE TIMES/SUNDAY
TIMES 'This is crime writing of the highest quality' DAILY MAIL
SOHO, 1935. SERGEANT LEON GEATS' PATCH. A snarling, skull-cracking
misanthrope, Geats marshals the grimy rabble according to his own
elastic moral code. The narrow alleys are brimming with jazz bars,
bookies, blackshirts, ponces and tarts so when a body is found
above the Windmill Club, detectives are content to dismiss the case
as just another young woman who topped herself early. But Geats - a
good man prepared to be a bad one if it keeps the worst of them at
bay - knows the dark seams of the city. Working with his former
partner, mercenary Flying Squad sergeant Mark Cassar, Geats
obsessively dedicates himself to finding a warped killer - a
decision that will reverberate for a lifetime and transform both
men in ways they could never expect. 'A stirringly ambitious novel
that pairs the scope of James Ellroy's LA CONFIDENTIAL with the
psychological depth of Graham Greene's BRIGHTON ROCK.
Extraordinary.' A. J. FINN 'A tour de force. A brilliant marriage
of tension and rich detail.' HARRIET TYCE 'An epic, brutal,
blockbuster of a crime novel. It's the best film noir you've never
seen complete with a love story that might just rip your heart
out.' TREVOR WOOD 'An enthralling tale that takes you into the
seamy heart of Soho's past. Written in Nolan's visceral, muscular
prose, it is a joy to read.' LESLEY KARA 'A rich, ambitious,
masterpiece of a crime novel' OLIVIA KIERNAN 'Poetic and
tragic...but also vibrant, with a great depth of world and
character' JAMES DELARGY Praise for Dominic Nolan: 'Nolan is set to
become Britain's Michael Connelly' DAILY MAIL 'This powerhouse
novel is not for the fragile-hearted...one hell of a debut' HEAT 'A
smart, distinctive debut' SUNDAY MIRROR
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We Germans
(Paperback)
Alexander Starritt
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R311
R281
Discovery Miles 2 810
Save R30 (10%)
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Ships in 9 - 17 working days
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Winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Shortlisted for the Prix
Femina 2022 Shortlisted for the Prix Medicis 2022 'An impressively
realistic novel of German soldiers on the Eastern Front' Antony
Beevor 'Starritt's daring work challenges us to lay bare our
histories, to seek answers from the past, and to be open to
perspectives starkly different from our own' New York Times When a
young British man asks his German grandfather what it was like to
fight on the wrong side of the war, the question is initially met
with irritation and silence. But after the old man's death, a long
letter to his grandson is found among his things. That letter is
this book. In it, he relates the experiences of an unlikely few
days on the Eastern Front - at a moment when he knows not only that
Germany is going to lose the war, but that it deserves to. He
writes about his everyday experience amid horror, confusion and
great bravery, and he asks himself what responsibility he bears for
the circumstances he found himself in. As he tries to find an
answer he can live with, we hear from his grandson what kind of man
he became in the seventy years after the war. We Germans is a
fundamentally human novel that grapples with the most profound of
questions about guilt, shame and responsibility - questions that
remain as live today as they have always been.
Nine months after the Nazi occupation of Austria, 600 Jewish Children assembled at Vienna station to board the first of the Kindertransports bound for Britain. Among them was 10 year old Lore Segal.
For the next seven years, she lived as a refugee in other people's houses, moving from the Orthodox Levines in Liverpool, to the staunchly working class Hoopers in Kent, to the genteel Miss Douglas and her sister in Guildford. Few understood the terrors she had fled, or the crushing responsibility of trying to help her parents gain a visa. Amazingly she succeeds and two years later her parents arrive; their visa allows them to work as domestic servants - a humiliation for which they must be grateful.
In Other People's Houses Segal evokes with deep compassion, clarity and calm the experience of a child uprooted from a loving home to become stranded among strangers.
Amid the chaos of the Second World War comes a charming story of
courage and friendship, from the author of Green Dolphin Country
and A City of Bells. In the summer of 1940, as the darkest days of
the Second World War approach, a chance encounter on a train leads
Miss Brown to become housekeeper at the Castle. Hidden in a quiet,
rural corner of England, the crumbling castle is home to lonely
historian Mr Birley and his nephews, fighter pilot Richard and
fair, peace-loving Stephen. With young evacuees Moppet and Poppet,
and mysterious violinist Jo Isaacson, this unexpected family of
strangers come to rely on each other as the devastations of war
rage on.
Carol Shields has called this 'a remarkable and brave 1924 novel
about being a house husband.' Preface by Karen Knox.
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