Author(s): Madeleine Bunting

Novel

Description: 1940. Guernsey is first bombed, then occupied, by the Germans. A year earlier, young, naive and recently married Helene, waves goodbye to her husband, who has enlisted in the British army. Protected only by her father and Nanna, Helene must carve out a life on the island for the length of the war. Forty years later, her daughter Roz begins a search for the truth about her father, and stumbles into the secret history of her mother's life. Written with emotional acuity and passionate intensity, Island Song speaks of the moral complexities living with the enemy and the messy reality of human relationships in a tightly knit community. As Roz discovers, truth is hard to pin down, and so are the rights and wrongs of those struggling to survive in the most difficult of circumstances.

Author Biography: Madeleine Bunting was for many years a columnist for the Guardian, which she joined in 1990. Born in North Yorkshire, Bunting read History at Cambridge and Politics at Harvard. She is the author of The Model Occupation: The Channel Islands under German Rule, 1940-45; Willing Slaves: How the Overwork Culture is Ruling Our Lives (both published by HarperCollins), The Plot: A Biography of an English Acre (published by Granta in 2009) which won the Portico Prize and was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize, and Love of Country which was shortlisted for the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize 2017. Island Song is her first novel. She lives in London with her family.

Promotional Information: A spellbinding novel of love, hidden World War II secrets and living with the enemy on the island of Guernsey, from the author of The Plot and Love of Country