Into Suez - Hardcover

Margaret Drabble writes in the Telegraph books for the summer feature Stevie Davies s Into Suez (Parthian, £11.99), which I ve just finished, is a bold and gripping novel on an important subject, with a beautifully handled double time frame, and some of Davies s best prose yet. She writes so well about childhood, landscape, class, British social attitudes and Arab realities. The careful research never intrudes and always rings true. Her characters are rounded in time, grounded in place. A very satisfying and moving book. The Telegraph --Margaret Drabble, The Telegraph

Davies writes with an intensity which is simultaneously disturbing and exhilarating; her prose has a marvellous lyricism whether she is describing the heat of Ismailia or the rain in Wales: Times Literary Supplement --Times Literary Supplement

Stevie Davies is one of our most consistent and continually undervalued writers whose unsentimental, quietly revelatory novels have cropped up on the Booker and Orange shortlists without ever quite converting to a major prize. Into Suez, her 11th novel, deserves to be the one that brings wider renown, as it presents the most fully realised fusion of her personal and political histories to date: Guardian Review An astonishing piece of writing, and writing a review is going to be like scrawling 77 per cent, well done at the bottom of a manuscript of A la recherche du temps perdu ... a rich, subtle, intricate novel, writing with a type of imaginative power that is capable of transporting the reader into a world that is at once very far away and still very close: Planet: the Welsh Internationalist --The Guardian Planet Welsh Internationalist

Alongside Jonathan Franzen's Freedom and Martin Amis' The Pregnant Widow, Stevie Davies' ambitious historical novel gained the accolade of one of the most exciting books of the year in the Guardian this week by author and journalist Margaret Drabble. She writes, Stevie Davies, in Into Suez (Parthian Books), tackles historical material in a novel that personalises the forces of imperialism and the British class system as it moves with ease from Egypt immediately after the second world war to the 21st century and back again. Davies has a fine eye for colour and place, and a keen recall of the sensations of childhood, and her characters are full of quirks and eccentricities while telling the story of a whole generation. the guardian --The Guardian parthianbooks.com

Stevie Davies is one of our most consistent and continually undervalued writers whose unsentimental, quietly revelatory novels have cropped up on the Booker and Orange shortlists without ever quite converting to a major prize. Into Suez, her 11th novel, deserves to be the one that brings wider renown, as it presents the most fully realised fusion of her personal and political histories to date: Guardian Review An astonishing piece of writing, and writing a review is going to be like scrawling 77 per cent, well done at the bottom of a manuscript of A la recherche du temps perdu ... a rich, subtle, intricate novel, writing with a type of imaginative power that is capable of transporting the reader into a world that is at once very far away and still very close: Planet: the Welsh Internationalist --The Guardian Planet Welsh Internationalist

1949: Egypt's struggle against its British occupiers moves towards crisis; Israel declares its statehood, driving out the Arabs; Joe Roberts, an RAF sergeant, his wife Ailsa and daughter, Nia, leave Wales for Egypt. "Into Suez" is a compelling human and political drama, set in the postwar period when Britain, the bankrupt victor of the Second World War, attempted to assert itself as an Imperial power in a world wholly altered. The novel is set in the run-up to the Suez Crisis, a template for future invasions (Iraq and Afghanistan being the most recent). In this moving story, Joe's tragedy is that of an ordinary working man of his generation: he's a lovely, humorous, emotional man in whom the common ration of racism and misogyny becomes a painful sickness. Ailsa, intelligent, curious and craving to explore the realities of the Egypt she enters, meets on the voyage out Mona, a Palestinian woman who excites in her yearning for a world beyond her horizons. When Joe's closest friend is murdered by Egyptian terrorists, their relationship spirals towards tragedy. Through it all, love remains. Looking back in old age, their daughter Nia follows in their wake to sail the Suez Canal with the aged Mona. Nia has been told her father was a war hero: now she will face a more painful truth.