Ella Morris

From a writer admired by Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, and Melvyn Bragg, an epic family saga spanning the decades from the Second World War to the Balkan conflict

'This is a bold and fascinating mystery novel of ideas. John David Morley enfolds science and human loss with great fictional cunning' Ian McEwan on The Book of Opposites

'[A] splendid book' Kazuo Ishiguro on Pictures from the Water Trade

'Exquisite . . . There is beauty in strange places in Morley's haunting scheme' Sunday Telegraph on Journey to the End of the Whale

'A remarkable feat of imagination and sheer narrative energy' Frank Kermode on Passage

'A marvellous and original work of fiction' Melvyn Bragg on Journey to the End of the Whale

Spanning the decades from World War II to the Yugoslav conflict, Ella Morris is the story of a remarkable woman, and of the toll history takes on individual lives. Born in Berlin on the eve of Hitler's rise to power, Ella Andrzejewski escapes Soviet-occupied Europe and finds a safe haven in England. Here, she marries George Morris, but subsequently falls in love with Claude de Marsay, a French student ten years her junior. The intrusion of Claude upsets the balance of the Morris household, while the effects of Ella's traumatic past continue to be felt. As the decades pass and Europe lurches towards another conflict, Ella's children and grandchildren struggle to find their peace in a continent still reverberating with the echoes of war.

About the Author

John David Morley was born in Singapore in 1948 and raised in Malaya and on Africa's Gold Coast before he went to school in England. He took his first job as a stagehand, followed by a spell teaching in Mexico. He spent three years studying in Japan, subject of his international bestseller Pictures from the Water Trade. Having made his home in Munich, the focus of Morley's life has been in Central Europe, where for twenty-five years he worked as a location manager for Japanese TV and as a journalist for publications such as The Times, the Sunday Times Magazine, the Observer and Conde Nast Traveller. Ella Morris is his tenth novel.