From the author of The Dark Room comes a strikingly powerful collection of stories exploring themes of guilt, love and sacrifice with a haunting emotional precision. With a range of settings as diverse as the Scottish seaside and post-Communist eastern Germany Seiffert uses the locations of these stories to bring her charac

Field Study

Seiffert, Rachel

Vintage

The Dark Room: A Novel

The Dark Room

TEXAS BOOK

Stevie comes from a long line of people who have cut and run. Just like he has. Only he’s not so sure he was right to go. He’s been to London, taught himself to get by, and now he’s working as a laborer not so far from his childhood home in Glasgow. But Stevie hasn’t told his family—what’s left of them—that he’s back. Not yet. He’s also not far from his uncle Eric, another one who left—for love this time. Stevie’s toughened himself up against that emotion. And as for his mother, Lindsey . . . well, she ran her whole life. From her father and Ireland, from her husband, and eventually from Stevie, too. Moving between Stevie’s contemporary Glaswegian life and the story of his parents when they were young, The Walk Home is a powerful novel about the risk of love, and the madness and betrayals that can split a family. Without your past, who are you? Where does it leave you when you go against your family, turn your back on your home; when you defy the world you grew up in? If you cut your ties, will you cut yourself adrift? Yearning to belong exerts a powerful draw, and Stevie knows there are still people waiting for him to walk home. An extraordinarily deft and humane writer, Rachel Seiffert tells us the truth about love and about hope.

The Walk Home: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

British & Irish

Pantheon

Early on a grey November morning in 1941, only weeks after the German invasion, a small Ukrainian town is overrun by the SS. This new novel from the award-winning author of the Booker Prize short-listed The Dark Room tells of the three days that follow and the lives that are overturned in the process. Penned in with his fellow Jews, under threat of deportation, Ephraim anxiously awaits word of his two sons, missing since daybreak. Come in search of her lover, to fetch him home again, away from the invaders, Yasia must confront new and harsh truths about those closest to her. Here to avoid a war he considers criminal, German engineer Otto Pohl is faced with an even greater crime unfolding behind the lines, and no one but himself to turn to. And in the midst of it all is Yankel, a boy determined to survive this. But to do so, he must throw in his lot with strangers. As their stories mesh, each of Rachel Seiffert’s characters comes to know the compromises demanded by survival, the oppressive power of fear, and the possibility of courage in the face of terror. Rich with a rare compassion and emotional depth, A Boy in Winter is a story of hope when all is lost and of mercy when the times have none.

A Boy in Winter: A Novel

Literary

Now a Major Motion Picture: in Lore, Rachel Seiffert powerfully examines the legacy of World War II on ordinary Germans--both survivors of the war and the generations that succeeded them. It is spring of 1945, just weeks after the defeat of Germany. A teenage German girl named Lore has been left to fend for herself. Her parents have been arrested by the Allies, and she has four younger siblings to care for. Together, they set off on a harrowing journey to find their grandmother. As we follow Lore on a 500-mile trek through the four zones of occupation, Seiffert evokes the experiences of the individual with astonishing emotional depth and psychological acuity.

Lore (Movie Tie-in Edition) (Vintage International)

Now a Major Motion Picture, Lore (previously published as The Dark Room) is a powerful, suspenseful work of fiction that examines the legacy of World War II on ordinary Germans -- both immediate survivors of the war and future generations. A Booker Prize finalist and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In the spring of 1945, weeks after the defeat of Germany, a teenage girl called Lore -- whose parents have been arrested by the Allies -- sets off with her four younger siblings on a 500-mile illegal trek through the four zones of occupation in search of their grandmother. This central episode of a novel in three parts is the basis for a new film.

Lore (Movie Tie-in Edition)

Vintage Canada

Once the Deed Is Done: 'A crime novel in the sense that TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is a crime novel. One in which a whole community is culpable' Financial Times

Genre Fiction

Virago Press Ltd.

A debut novel that retells the history of twentieth-century Germany through the experiences of three ordinary Germans. Helmut: A boy born with a physical deformity finds work as a photographer’s assistant during the 1930s and captures on film the changing temper of Berlin, the city he loves. But his acute photographic eye never provides him with the power to understand the significance of what he sees through his camera. . . . Lore: In the weeks following Germany’s surrender, a teenage girl whose parents are both in Allied captivity takes her younger siblings on a terrifying, illegal journey through the four zones of occupation in search of her grandmother. . . . Micha: Many years after the war, a young man trying to discover why the Russians imprisoned his grandfather for nine years after the war meets resistance at every turn; the only person who agrees, reluctantly, to help him is compromised by his own past. The Dark Room evokes the experiences of the individual with astonishing emotional depth and psychological authenticity. With dazzling originality and to profound effect, Rachel Seiffert has re-envisioned and illuminated signal moments of the twentieth century in all their drama and complexity.

From the author of the award-winning The Dark Room, here is a strikingly powerful collection of stories that explores with haunting precision themes of guilt, love, and sacrifice. In a variety of settings–from the Scottish seaside to post—Communist Germany–Rachel Seiffert’s stories map the terrain of human behavior with a nuance and subtlety that are at once dazzling and unsettling. Powerfully evoking our need for connection, Field Study takes us on journeys that demonstrate both the fragility and adaptability of our emotions, and the vast potential for danger and vulnerability created by all types of love. In “Reach,” “Dog-Leg Lane,” and “Tentsmuir Sands,” Seiffert explores the dynamic between parents and children, the special knowing that children have but don’t always express in ways their parents can understand. In “Francis John Jones, 1924—” she draws a portrait of an old man recounting an experience as a soldier in World War II that saved his life but left him with deep regrets. In “The Late Spring,” a man who has led a solitary life begins to accept what he knows will be his solitary death. And in “Blue,” two teenagers try to come to grips, in conflicting ways, with their first pressing desires for independence. Seiffert isolates and captures not only the underlying and compelling sorrow of love but also the joy and desire for love that keep us alive.

Field Study: Stories

Romance

Rachel Seiffert’s first book, The Dark Room, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, announced the arrival of a major writer; Afterwards fulfills that promise with a stunning novel about war and its brutal after-effect. Alice is the protagonist of Afterwards, but this book is about the guilt harboured by people around her. There are two men in her life: her maternal grandfather, David, recently widowed, and her boyfriend, Joseph, each of whom keeps his past from his loved ones. David served in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion; Joseph, during a stint in the British army, served in Northern Ireland. Both, we learn, live with the memory of having killed in the line of duty. As Alice’s relationship with Joseph develops, she senses there is something about his past that he keeps hidden. This is particularly galling given the personal and emotional details she has revealed to him (namely, that Alice has never met her father, and her attempts to establish an epistolary relationship with him in adulthood foundered). After her grandmother’s death, Alice finds the time spent with her grandfather awkward. She doesn’t know him the way she did her grandmother, but feels obliged to visit and offer support. Gradually, it emerges that David’s cold manner is traceable to events in Kenya, where he and his wife met. And as Alice tries to get to the bottom of Joseph’s reticence, a series of heated family discussions brushes ever closer to David’s secrets.

Afterwards: A Novel

Contemporary

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