Book description
In 1942, Charlotte Gray, a young scottish woman, goes to Occupied
France on a dual mission - officially, to run an apparently simple
errand for a British special operations group and unofficially, to
search for her lover, an English airman who has gone missing in
action. In the small town of Lavaurette, Sebastian Faulks presents a
microcosm of France and its agony in 'the black years'. Here is the
full range of collaboration, from the tacit to the enthusiastic, as
well as examples of extraordinary courage and altruism. Through the
local resistance chief Julien, Charlotte meets his father, a Jewish
painter whose inspiration has failed him.
In a series of shocking narrative climaxes in which the full extent
of French collusion in the Nazi holocaust is delineated, Faulks brings
the story to a resolution of redemptive love. In the delicacy of its
writing, the intimacy of its characterisation and its powerful
narrative scenes of harrowing public events, Charlotte Gray is
a worthy successor to Birdsong.
Sebastian Faulks was born and brought up in Newbury, Berkshire. He
worked in journalism before starting to write books. He is best known
for the French trilogy,
The Girl at the Lion d'Or
,
Birdsong
and
Charlotte
Gray
(1989-1997) and is also the author of a triple biography,
The Fatal Englishman
(1996); a small book of literary parodies,
Pistache
(2006); and the novels
Human
Traces
(2005) and
Engleby
(2007). He lives in London with his wife and their three children.
