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The Kingdom of Ashes
  • Published: 15 July 2008
  • ISBN: 9780552774178
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 480
  • RRP: $35.00

The Kingdom of Ashes

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Sept 2010
Paperback
15 July 2008
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The astonishing new novel from one of the UK's finest literary writers

Germany, spring 1946. The Nuremberg Trials are underway. Three hundred miles north, in the Rehstadt Institute, a British "Assessment and Evaluation" centre, Alex Foster interrogates a succession of lesser war criminals, exploring their pasts and their crimes, and deciding their futures in the soon-to-be-reborn Germany.

But Rehstadt, a town largely untouched by the war, is a place of old hostilities and burnished hatreds; a place still not entirely at peace; a place where the certainties of the past are still weighed favourably against the deprivations of the present and the vague, uncertain promises of the future.

As spring progresses, and as events in the wider world quicken to their own closely observed conclusion, Alex Foster finds himself at the centre of a conflict involving British, American and German interests; and for the first time in his career he also finds himself compromised - forced into subterfuge and deceit as he struggles to weigh personal convictions and loyalties against the greater political and military good...
  • Published: 15 July 2008
  • ISBN: 9780552774178
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 480
  • RRP: $35.00
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About the author

Robert Edric

Robert Edric was born in 1956. His novels include Winter Garden (James Tait Black Prize winner 1986), A New Ice Age (runner-up for the Guardian Fiction Prize 1986), The Book of the Heathen (winner of the WH Smith LIterary Award 2000), Peacetime (longlisted for the Booker Prize 2002), Gathering the Water (longlisted for the Booker Prize 2006) and In Zodiac Light (shortlisted for the Dublin Impac Prize 2010). His most recent novel is Sanctuary. He lives in Yorkshire.

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Also by Robert Edric

Mercury Falling
Field Service
Sanctuary
The Monster's Lament
The Devil's Beat
The London Satyr
Salvage
See all

Praise for The Kingdom of Ashes

An impressive tale of love and death in wartime...much contemporary fiction seems inconsequential and fleeting by comparison

Guardian

Edric handles the many characters and threads of this complex novel with skill...[his] consistent brilliance is astounding

Literary Review

His descriptions are masterful

Scottish Sunday Herald

A novel of a particular time and place, but one that poses timeless questions...Very satisfying...He is at his best here

The Scotsman

Compelling...Edric has a flawless sense of pace, and an intuitive grasp of character

Sunday Times

This compelling, unsettling work brilliantly conveys the ambiguities of operating in this defeated, difficult country

Good Book Guide