The Separation
Language: English
Published by Old Earth Books, Baltimore, 2005
- First Edition
- Softcover
- Used
Seller: Bookplate, Chestertown, MD, U.S.A.Bookplate
AbeBooks seller since September 14, 1999
Condition: Used - Very good
£ 15.24
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
Seller Inventory # ABE-1604972590031
- Title
- The Separation
- Author
- Christopher Priest
- Publisher
- Old Earth Books, Baltimore
- Publication year
- 2005
- Condition
- Very Good
- Binding
- Soft cover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 1882968336
- ISBN 13
- 9781882968336
- Edition
- 1st Edition
- Seller catalogs
- Arc/Galley/Proof
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)
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review
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
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Bookplate
Chestertown, MD, U.S.A.
AbeBooks seller since September 14, 1999
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