The Separation - Hardcover

Priest, Christopher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1882968336 ISBN 13: 9781882968336

Publisher: Old Earth Books, 2005

Synopsis

Researching the war between Britain and Nazi Germany, which lasted from May 1940 to May 1941, historian Stuart Gratton becomes intrigued by the enigma of J.L. Sawyer, an obscure figure who played a key part in bringing the conflict to its conclusion. As he digs deeper, he discovers there were two J.L. Sawyers - identical twins Jack and Joe, one a fighter pilot and the other a conscientous objector - divided both by their love for the same woman and their attitudes towards the war. But as the brothers' story emerges from books, letters, and diaries, the evidence does not all add up, and there may be an even wider separation between them - divergent realities, in which different possibilities and unexpected truths emerge, and nothing is quite what it seems.

Both a brilliant historical novel about World War II and one of the best works of alternate history ever written, Christopher Priest's The Separation earned the Arthur C. Clarke and BSFA Awards and ranks among his finest achievements. Like his classics The Affirmation and The Prestige, it is an engrossing literary puzzle that will keep readers turning the pages until its startling conclusion.

'An astonishing achievement.' - Locus

'A masterly novel that deserves to become a classic.' - The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

'A complex and enigmatic tale of identity, illusion and deception.' - Glasgow Herald

'Superbly constructed, the prose admirably spare and elegant ... a queasily gripping and intelligent work of fiction.' - Daily Telegraph

'A subtle, unsettling alternative WWII history.' - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

About this title

Review

Christopher Priest excels at rethinking SF themes, lifting them above genre expectations into his own tricky, chilling, metaphysically dangerous territory. The Separation suggests an alternate history lying along a road not taken in World War II. But there are complications.

In 1999, history author Stuart Gratton is intrigued by a minor mystery of the European war which ended on 10 May 1941. The British-German armistice signed that month has had far-reaching consequences, including a resettlement of European Jews in Madagascar.

In 1936, the identical twin brothers Joe and Jack Sawyer win a rowing medal for Britain in the Berlin Olympics: it's presented to them by Rudolf Hess. The brothers are separated not only by a twin's fierce need "to be treated as a separate human being", but by sexual rivalry and even ideology. When war breaks out Jack becomes a gung-ho bomber pilot, Joe a conscientious objector. Still they're inescapably linked, and sometimes confused. Both suffer injuries and hauntingly similar ambulance journeys. Churchill writes a puzzled memo (later unearthed by Gratton) about the anomaly of a registered-pacifist Red Cross worker flying planes for Bomber Command. Hess has significant, eventually incompatible meetings with both men. Contradictions are everywhere.

As in his magical 1995 novel The Prestige Priest is fruitfully fascinated by the legerdemain of twins, doubles, impostors, symmetrical roles. Churchill's double briefly appears. So does the famous conspiracy theory that the Hess who flew to Britain with his quixotic peace deal wasn't the real Hess ring true? Clearly The Separation was impressively, extensively researched. Its evocations of bombing raids--from either side of the bomb sites--are memorable.

The unfolding story strands become increasingly disorienting and hallucinatory; the easy escape route of dismissing one strand as delusion is itself subtly undermined. The Separation is filled with a sense of the precariousness of history; of small events and choices with extraordinary consequences. --David Langford

Book Description

Christopher Priest's finest novel in his 30-year-career as an award-winning writer, newly packaged for a new audience

Edition details

• Publisher: Old Earth Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1882968336
• ISBN 13: 9781882968336
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 338