The Absolutist

By John Boyne,

Book cover of The Absolutist

Book description

It's September 1919: twenty-one-year-old Tristan Sadler takes a train from London to Norwich to deliver some letters to Marian Bancroft. Tristan fought alongside Marian's brother Will during the Great War, but in 1917 Will laid down his guns on the battlefield, declared himself a conscientious objector and was shot as…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Absolutist as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Boyne is a master storyteller, enormously gifted in doling out a story so that it unfolds bit by bit before us. I am in awe of his skill.

After WWI, a young soldier called Tristan is compelled to visit the sister of a fallen comrade to deliver the sister’s saved letters to her brother. All we know of Tristan is that he has endured something so terrible he at times would prefer not to live. 

What he does not tell is that he was intimately involved with her brother Will a few times, and loves him, but though the intimacy…

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