Resistance

Description

In the months afterwards all of the women, at some point, said they'd known the men were leaving the valley . . . 1944.
After the fall of Russia and the failed D-Day landings, a German counter-attack lands on British soil. Within a month, half of Britain is occupied. Sarah Lewis, a 26-year-old farmer's wife, wakes to find her husband Tom has disappeared. She is not alone, as all the women in the isolated Welsh border valley of Olchon wake to find their husbands gone. With this sudden and unexplained absence they regroup as an all-female community and wait, hoping for news. A German patrol arrives in the valley, the purpose of their mission a mystery. When a severe winter forces the two groups into co-operation, a fragile mutual dependency develops. Sarah begins a faltering acquaintance with the patrol's commanding officer, Albrecht Wolfram. But with the threat of the war that surrounds them pressing in, how long can the valley's delicate state of harmony survive? Imbued with immense imaginative breadth and confidence, Owen Sheers' debut novel unfolds with the pace and intensity of a thriller. A hymn to the glorious landscape of the border territories and a gripping portrait of a community under siege, Resistance is a first novel of considerable grace and power.

Promotion info

A thrilling and emotionally intense novel set in a World War Two where Britain has been invaded.

Reviews

"'This remarkable first novel is... a brilliant and sometimes frightening thriller, and a mature exploration of human blur and compromise.' Jan Morris, Guardian"

Author description

Owen Sheers was born in Fiji in 1974 and brought up in Abergavenny, South Wales. The winner of an Eric Gregory Award and the 1999 Vogue Young Writer's Award, his first collection of poetry, The Blue Book was short-listed for the Welsh Book of the Year and the Forward Prize Best 1st Collection 2001. His prose debut The Dust Diaries was short-listed for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and won the Welsh Book of the Year Award 2005. Unicorns, Almost his one man play about WWII poet Keith Douglas will be produced by Old Vic Productions. His second poetry collection Skirrid Hill was published in October.