It is May 1944 and in Eastern Europe the Second World War is reaching a dramatic and bloody crescendo. 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 - sent to assist the resistance in their battle against the Axis forces. Greeted upon arrival by a rag-tag group of Partisans, the men are led off into the countryside. It is early summer, and the mountains and forests teem with life and colour. 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. Yet after a series of daring encounters, the enemy's net begins to tighten. They find evidence of massacres, of a dark and terrible band of men pursuing them through the wilderness. As the Partisans 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.
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. -- Maya Jaggi Guardian
[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. - The Times
I have never failed to be impressed by the quality of his writing and the inventiveness of his story lines.The book unfolds with some remarkably well-written set-pieces. Relationships are clarified, enemy (and allied) plots are uncovered and the inevitable conflict eventually occurs with a great disruption to souls and bodies. - A Common Reader
Author
About Tim Pears
Born in 1956, Tim Pears grew up in Devon, left school at sixteen and had countless menial jobs before studying at the National Film and Television School. He is the author of six previous novels, including In the Place of Fallen Leaves, which won the Hawthornden Prize and the Ruth Hadden Memorial Award, In a Land of Plenty, which was made into a ten part drama series for the BBC, and, most recently, Landed. He has been Writer in Residence at Cheltenham Festival of Literature, and Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Oxford Brookes University, and has taught creative writing at Ruskin College and elsewhere. He lives in Oxford with his wife and children.
