- Published: 06/03/2014
- ISBN: 9781847088253
- Granta Books
- 272 pages
The Letter Bearer
Robert Allison
The Rider has no memory of who he is, or how he came to be lying – dying – in the brutal heat of the North African desert. Rescued by a band of deserters, the Rider begins to piece together his identity, based on shards of recollection and the letters in his post bag.
The Letter Bearer is unlike any other novel of World War Two. It asks profound questions about trauma, warfare and the experience of desertion. This gripping story asks us to consider how men build hope when they have nothing left – not even a name.
£7.99
A tremendous Second World War novel... [With] thickets of intense, opaque prose and some striking, hallucinatory descriptions of the desert... Allison writes powerfully - often thrillingly - about conflict... Tremendous
Adrian Turpin, Financial Times
A novel which lifts the fog of war by stages to reveal not chaos but a dreadful moral clarity
James Buchan
Takes its readers into the dark heart of war... Haunting... poignant... delivered with an unerring eye for detail. The literature of war is as old as war itself and this harrowing novel is a fine addition to it