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.
Publisher: Granta Books
ISBN: 9781847088260
Number of pages: 272
Weight: 193 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 18 mm
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 - Sunday Telegraph
Excellent and elegant... We realise we are dealing with an exploration of human fallibility wrapped up in a mystery, and the effect is both thrilling and unsettling... A clever story about memory and identity... underpinned by wonderful writing - Chris Cleave, Chair of the Desmond Elliot Prize Judges
A compelling and strikingly unsentimental story of men caught up in war's lunacy. - David Downing
This debut will please fans of Michael Ondatjee's The English Patient - Bookseller
Allison's first novel is full of gorgeous metaphors contrasted with a cool dissection of cowardice - Gloucestershire Echo
Excellent - Networked Blogs
The novel excels in detail - Ian Sansom, Guardian
An unusual and ambitious work, one that offers a new perspective on the traditional war novel - Billy O’Callaghan, Irish Examiner
This is an artfully crafted book with passages of action and punchy dialogue - Telegraph and Argus
This is an artfully crafted book with passages of action and punchy dialogue interspersed with metaphysical ruminative reflections that recall Albert Camus - Ilkley Gazette
Vivid... lives in the detail - Sydney Morning News
There are so many things to love and admire about this novel: its unusual focus on a band of army deserters during the Second World War is refreshing in eschewing heroism for a start. Its balancing of psychological depth and authentic geographical detail is lovely and perfectly pitched. Allison's astonishing debut is one of the more original and quite unforgettable takes on the war - Lesley McDowell, Independent on Sunday
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