This is the new novel by the author of The Dictionary Of Lost Words and The Bookbinder of Jericho. Set in France in 1915, it is a story about love between enemies behind the lines of WWI and an Australian artist who captures their secret.
Written as a novel about desire when the sensation of trauma has left you numb, the desire to observe and record when your perspective is not valued, the desire to understand the past when only fragments remain. The nurse is called Tilda and the German doctor Hugo is a prisoner of war allowed to practice on injured countrymen. Where their connection comes to light is when Tilda’s friend, the Australian artist Iso Rae, captures their furtive delicate moments.
Iso is denied the chance to be an official war artist because she is a woman. Nevertheless she paints the war regardless, with glimpses of Tilda and Hugo woven into her work. A century later when these drawings are discovered by a researcher, they become a puzzle for her to identify who were these lovers and what became of them.
This is a deeply moving and transformative novel detailing the stories history leaves behind, the lives that shape our understanding of the past and the imagination required to bring them back into the light.
THE GERMAN WARD has been published by Simon and Schuster
