![The Garden Court, 1875-1880 painting by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones](/sites/default/files/styles/16_9_media_small/public/2021-10/GettyImages-1144541838_1.jpg?h=aa5dac6a&itok=SbJgbV_I 750w, /sites/default/files/styles/16_9_media_medium/public/2021-10/GettyImages-1144541838_1.jpg?h=aa5dac6a&itok=J5bQK4UG 1000w, /sites/default/files/styles/16_9_media_large/public/2021-10/GettyImages-1144541838_1.jpg?h=aa5dac6a&itok=wrhn_LQr 1300w)
Passions run high in Alison MacLeod's strikingly original novel of love and prejudice in wartime Brighton.
1940, Brighton. Geoffrey and Evelyn Beaumont and their eight-year-old son, Philip, anxiously await news of the expected enemy landing on the town beaches. The crisis passes – others lie ahead. Evelyn’s thoughts have become tinged with a mounting, indefinable desperation. Then she meets Otto Gottlieb, a German-Jewish prisoner in the internment camp that her husband commands. As Europe crumbles, Evelyn’s and Otto’s mutual distrust slowly begins to change into something else.
About the Author
In 1987, aged 22, Alison MacLeod moved from her native Canada to England, supposedly for one year to read for an MA. The moved has proved rather more permanent: she is still here.