Warlight
Book description
**LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018**
An elegiac novel set in post-WW2 London about memory, family secrets and lies, from the internationally acclaimed author of The English Patient
It is 1945, and London is still reeling from the Blitz. 14-year-old Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, are apparently abandoned by…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Warlight as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Since my own novel is set partly in post-war England, I was drawn to Ondaatje’s Warlight, which begins in 1945 London as the city is recovering from brutal bombing. Another hook for me was the youthful characters; my book is also populated with war-confused children. Ondaatje’s narrator, 14-year-old Nathaniel, recalls his youth with the benefit of adult wisdom. He and his sister Rachel are abandoned by their parents to the care of some eccentric and slightly dangerous characters. Their teen years are marked by many mysterious events and experiences, only beginning to clarify in retrospect. Do we ever know…
From Amanda's list on human relations in the altered reality of wartime.
I’m not sure why war books have dominated my leisure reading of late, but Michael Ondaatje, who wrote a wonderfully complex World War 2 novel in The English Patient, has returned to the subject with a, to me, more accessible tale in Warlight. Don’t expect all the vagaries to be magically made clear by the end, but do anticipate being engrossed by a subtly heartbreaking story of a brother and a sister abandoned by parents called to war duty (or maybe not) and left to the care of a mishmash of mysterious rogues (or maybe not again.) It’s a…
From Howard's list on big stories through a small lens.
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