Normandy, 1944. In a small village near Bayeux, a young soldier comes across an isolated farmhouse, where a woman waits alone. As they talk, three grim-faced Frenchmen arrive to take her away for ‘questioning’, telling him she betrayed their Resistance colleagues to the Gestapo, through her SS lover.
The soldier is armed, and forces them to leave her - but they all know he will eventually have to move on, and the woman will be theirs.
What follows has been described as both appalling and the finest love story - the grain of sand in which one can see all war.
In 1976, one of this country’s finest novelists, the late M.K. Joseph first published this stunningly simple yet devastating novel, a powerful story of love and betrayal you will find very hard to forget.
About the Author:
Michael Joseph was born in England in 1914 and spent two years of his childhood in Belguim, moving to New Zealand in 1924. During WWII he joined the Royal Artillery and then an Air OP unit. He returned to New Zealand in 1946 and later became and associate professor of English at Auckland University. He died in 1981.
