As part of Faber's Secrets and Lies series comes a thrilling and emotionally intense novel set in a World War Two where Britain has been invaded.
1944. After the fall of Russia and the failed D-Day landings, half of Britain is occupied... Young farmer's wife Sarah Lewis wakes to find her husband has disappeared, along with all of the men from her remote Welsh village.
A German patrol arrives in the valley, the purpose of their mission a mystery. Sarah begins a faltering acquaintance with the patrol's commanding officer, Albrecht, and it is to her that he reveals the purpose of his mission - to claim an extraordinary medieval art treasure that lies hidden in the valley. But as the pressure of the war beyond presses in on this isolated community, this fragile state of harmony is increasingly threatened.
About the Author
Owen Sheers, born in Fiji in 1974 and brought up in Abergavenny, South Wales, was the 1999 winner of both an Eric Gregory Award and the Vogue Young Writer's Award. His first collection of poetry, The Blue Book, was short-listed for the Wales Book of the Year and the 2001 Forward Poetry Prize. His debut prose, The Dust Diaries, a nonfiction narrative set in Zimbabwe, was short-listed for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize and won the 2005 Wales Book of the Year. In 2004 he was writer in residence at the Wordsworth Trust and was selected as one of the Poetry Book Society's 20 Next Generation Poets. His second collection, Skirrid Hill, won a Society of Authors' Somerset Maugham Award. Sheers is currently a Fellow of the New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. Resistance is his first novel, and he is working on a second.
Industry Reviews
"Magical. . . . Sheers emerges as a gifted storyteller who can meld the literal and figurative to stunning--and tragic--effect." --Newsday
"An astonishing and compelling study of human nature against the backdrop of an occupied village. Sheers plumbs the depths of love, cowardice, bravery, and the devastating effects of blind patriotism, and in doing so exposes the best and worst of humanity in unexpected and haunting ways." --Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants
"Subtle and lyrical. . . . Emotionally complex, full of local rhythms and color, Sheers' first novel is hard to resist." --USA Today
"In its most surprising moments [Resistance] demonstrates fiction's unique power [to] remind us how complicated and compromising an actual act of resistance might be." --The New York Times Book Review
"Sheers's alternate reality is frighteningly convincing and dripping with heartbreak. This is an outstanding debut."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A remarkable first novel...Resistance is at once a brilliant and sometimes frightening thriller, and a mature exploration of human blur and compromise."--The Guardian
"Resistance [is] an impressive debut and confirms Sheers as a writer whose talent encompasses a variety of literary forms."--Observer
"A beautiful, vital novel, about the paths that can lead to war, and out of it."--Nadeem Aslam, author of Maps for Lost Lovers
"A remarkable work of speculative imagination. Sheers writes with an austere, bracing beauty perfectly attuned to the stark lives (and loves) of his characters. The result is that rare gift, a literary thriller whose pages we turn slowly, evenregretfully, savoring every word."--Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh Girl
"Owen Sheers's riveting debut novel beautifully illuminates that which is unalterable: the power of love and longing, community and courage." --Jennifer Vanderbes, author of Easter Island
