Peacetime - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Robert Edric was born in 1956. His novels include Winter Garden (1985 James Tait Black Prize winner), A New Ice Age (1986 runner-up for the Guardian Fiction Prize), A Lunar Eclipse, The Earth Made of Glass, Elysium, In Desolate Heaven, The Sword Cabinet, The Book of the Heathen (shortlisted for the 2001 WH Smith Literary Award) and Peacetime (longlisted for the Booker Prize 2002). He is also the author of the widely-acclaimed Song Cycle triology, which comprises Cradle Song, Siren Song and Swan Song.

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Late summer 1946: the Wash on the Fenland coast. Into a suspicious and isolated community comes James Mercer, employed in the demolition of gun platforms. He befriends the wife and daughter of Lynch, a soldier soon to be released from military gaol. He also finds himself drawn to Mathias, a German prisoner with no desire to return home, and Jacob, a Jewish concentration camp survivor.

Lynch's return threatens violence; and in a place where nothing has changed for decades, where peacetime feels no different to wartime, Mercer finds himself powerless to prevent events quickening to their violent and unexpected conclusion.

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atmospheric and powerful new novel set in 1946 on the east coast of England.

Late summer 1946: the Wash on the fenland coast. Into a suspicious and isolated community comes James Mercer, until recently a captain in the Engineers, now employed in the demolition of redundant gun platforms. A relationship grows between Mercer and the wife of a soldier who is expected home very soon, and whose arrival is awaited with anxiety. Mercer also befriends Mathias, a German prisoner of war engaged in similar work who has no wish to be repatriated; and Jacob, a Jew and camp survivor. Mercer soon learns there is a bond between the German and the Jew, and is drawn further into their history as the ex-soldier finally returns and begins to re-establish his overbearing authority. In a place where nothing has changed for decades, the agents of
destruction and renewal are at work. As the summer dies, animosities flare, prejudices and enmities are burnished and the six main characters circle each other