The Dynamite Room - Hardcover

'Superb. Absorbing, suspenseful and with a beautifully poetic touch'-- Nathan Filer, author of the Costa Book of the Year 2013, The Shock of the Fall

'An effective psychological drama between two extraordinary characters. Claustrophobic, touching, character-driven and told in lovely prose... Readers who loved The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas will have a strong affinity with The Dynamite Room' -- Katie Ward, author of Girl Reading

'Clever and unsettling, this most unconventional of war stories had me totally gripped' ---- Shelley Harris, author of Jubilee
Deeply thought provoking... Claustrophobic, tense and thoughtful The Lady

'Suspenseful and powerful. A novel of great humanity that exposes the absurd contradictions of war' ---- Samantha Harvey, author of The Wilderness
Ambitious and often gripping...Hewitt has a strong sense of narrative pace and brings a strange poetry to his depiction of an exhausted and empty world... tense and dramatic' -- Observer

'With its unshowy, confident prose, this novel is accomplished, resonant and surprising, and poses some delicately handled questions about whether redemption is possibled' ---- Guardian

July 1940. Eleven-year-old Lydia walks through a village in rural Suffolk on a baking hot day. She is wearing a gas mask. The shops and houses are empty, windows boarded up and sandbags green with mildew, the village seemingly deserted. Leaving it behind, she strikes off down a country lane through the salt marshes to a large Edwardian house -- the house she grew up in. Lydia finds it empty too, the windows covered in black-out blinds. Her family is gone. Late that night he comes, a soldier, gun in hand and heralding a full-blown German invasion. There are, he explains to her, certain rules she must now abide by. He won't hurt Lydia, but she cannot leave the house. Is he telling the truth? What is he looking for? Why is he so familiar? And how does he already know Lydia's name? Eerie, thrilling and piercingly sad,The Dynamite Room evokes the great tradition of war classics yet achieves a strikingly original and contemporary resonance. Hypnotically compelling, it explores, in the most extreme of circumstances, the bonds we share that make us human.