KINGDOM OF ASHES

At the heart of this novel is a love story which moves through and chronicles a little known coda of the war. KINGDOM OF ASHES is a beautifully realised and involving story.

Germany 1946, a provincial town near Hanover. The world's attention is turned on Nuremberg but away from the limelight there are trials going on throughout the rest of Germany. Alex Foster is a British officer sent out to interview prisoners of war. He listens to their stories, writes reports for his superiors. The war's aftermath is being sifted through. The world is trying to get back to normal, trying to remember what normality is. Alex falls in love with a local girl and through her sees at first hand the continued suffering of the civilian population, the bereaved, the homeless, the disillusioned. To the horror of his superiors and the animosity of the town's mayor and his cronies, Alex finds himself increasing involved in the plight of the town's most vulnerable residents.

Edric's last two literary novels were longlisted for the Booker Prize. We hope Kingdom of Ashes will go a step further. Robert Edric was born in 1956. In his writing career, he has been a winner of the 1985 James Tait Black Prize (for Winter Garden), a runner-up for the 1986 Guardian Fiction Prize (for A New Ice Age), a runner-up for the 2001 WH Smith Literary Award (for The Book of the Heathen), and in 2002, a Booker longlister (for Peacetime). After The Song Cycle Trilogy, his critically acclaimed series of crime novels set in Hull, Gathering the Water heralded his return to historical literary fiction and was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2006.