Chris Bohjalian’s UK debut is a haunting and beautifully written story set as the Second World War is ending. Anna is leaving East Prussia for the hope of a better life behind British or American lines, accompanied by the Scottish POW, her lover Callum, who has been working on her family’s land. Uri has escaped from the cattle cars carrying thousands of Jews to their deaths and meets Anna and Callum, disguising his identity. Constantly scared of discovery the group travel through war ravaged Europe. Bohjalian evokes the horrors and cruelty of war while showing the goodness in people that can come out of such atrocities. A very moving and powerful novel.
In January 1945, in the waning months of World War II, a small group of people begin the longest journey of their lives: an attempt to cross the remnants of the Third Reich to reach Allied lines. Among the group is 18-year-old Anna Emmerich, the daughter of Prussian aristocrats, her lover, Callum Finnella, a young Scottish prisoner of war and the intriguing Wehrmacht corporal whom the pair know as Manfred - who is, in reality, a Jew from Germany who managed a daring escape from a train bound for Auschwitz.
As they work their way west, they encounter a countryside ravaged by war. Their flight will test both Anna's and Callum's love, as well as their friendship with Manfred. But the greatest challenge they'll face on their journey is simply to survive...
Chris Bohjalian is the author of eleven novels, including The Double Bind, Before You Know Kindness and The Buffalo Soldier. His novel Midwives was a Publisher Weekly "Best Book" and a selection of Oprah's Book Club. His work has been translated into twenty languages. In 2002, he won the New England Book Award for fiction.
