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SUFFERANCE

Charles Palliser

From the author of the international bestseller The Quincunx comes a deeply unsettling psychological novel about the hideous decisions that people are forced to make when living under tyrannical regimes. Set in Eastern Europe during the Second World War.

When his nation is invaded and occupied by a brutal enemy, a well-intentioned man persuades his wife that they should give temporary shelter to a young girl who is at school with their daughter. He has no idea that the girl belongs to a community against whom the invader intends to commit genocide. Days stretch into weeks and then months while the enemy's pitiless hatred of the girl's community puts all of the family in danger. Nobody outside the family can be trusted with the dangerous secret and the threat from outside unlocks a darkness that threatens to derail them all. Charles Palliser is an American-born and British-based novelist. He is the author of five previous novel. His most well-known novel, The Quincunx, has sold over a million copies internationally. He is the elder brother of the late author and freelance journalist Marcus Palliser. He lives in London, UK.

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Book Published 2024-05-01 by Guernica Editions

Comments

When so much has been said about the Holocaust, a novel that provides a new perspective is to be welcomed. In Sufferance, Charles Palliser has made that terrible event horrifying but also universalised it and by doing so suggested that it could happen again in any country. The novel conveys the psychological claustrophobia of a family and its unwelcome guest as the murderous trap closes on them, tearing the family apart even as it faces the approaching terror.

A sinister undertone lurks throughout the narrative, and a real sense of doom overshadows. In the father, Palliser has created a rare character who in turns can be sympathetic and contemptible. His story races to an ending that leaves the reader stunned. This novel will evoke a full range of emotions. An impressive novel not to be missed'

Disturbing and distressingbut in the best possible way. Times like these call for strong medicine. The narrator reminded me very much of the old adage about the frog in a pot with the temperature being raised in very tiny, gradual incrementsnever becoming aware of the danger until it is too late. This is a small book that packs a big punchI am grateful to have read it. People everywhere need to do so, and especially in the places where self-reflection is least encouraged and most desperately required.

Sufferance is compulsive reading. It is shocking, gripping. The key is the narrator, the reader's own shadow, and a man who turns out to be unreliable. He is weak and clings to an ambition that becomes daily more unrealistic. This is a story that floats in Everywhere/Nowhere territory, with a few locational clues but ultimately universala parable for our times, a cautioning horror story, like the frog in the slow boiler, unaware until its final moments.

When so much has been said about the Holocaust, a novel that provides a new perspective is to be welcomed. In Sufferance, Charles Palliser has made that terrible event horrifying but also universalised it and by doing so suggested that it could happen again in any country. The novel conveys the psychological claustrophobia of a family and its unwelcome guest as the murderous trap closes on them, tearing the family apart even as it faces the approaching terror. Disturbing and distressingbut in the best possible way. Times like these call for strong medicine. The narrator reminded me very much of the old adage about the frog in a pot with the temperature being raised in very tiny, gradual incrementsnever becoming aware of the danger until it is too late. This is a small book that packs a big punchI am grateful to have read it. People everywhere need to do so, and especially in the places where self-reflection is least encouraged and most desperately required. Sufferance is an important novel. Powerful . brilliant . vivid . It's an honest and unflinching encounter with the darkness that ever threatens the whole bloody human endeavor everywhere. Even now. Especially now. . At the end . tears blurred my page.

Occasionally, very occasionally, a novel comes along these days that is imbued with a sense of classic literature. Such is the case with Charles Palliser's latest novel, Sufferance. . Like much great literary fiction, this work is a journey into the human conscience, where empathy and antipathy collide when survival is at stake.'

When we think of the Holocaust, or indeed, any genocide, there is often the question of complicity: how does a person living among it allow everything to happen without resistance? What delusions and lies do they tell themselves to make the indefensible possible? Charles Palliser's Sufferance begins with a disquieting elegance and ends on a note so chilling, I could hardly sleep. His unnamed narrator tries to tell his story as dispassionately as possible, and yet Palliser's brilliance is in revealing his casual antisemitism and misogyny subtly enough to render the reader unsure of where the story is going. Like a combination of Holocaust survivor Aharon Applefeld's Badenheim 1939, and Orwell's 1984, with a touch of the darkness of Cynthia Ozick, Sufferance is exceptional, and a must read at times like these.

[A] brilliantly clever novel, which haunts me days after finishing it. Charles Pallister deserves a wide audience for it'

The Quincunx author's sixth book, the story of a family in crisis in an authoritarian regime, is exquisitely plotted and satisfying. The slow escalation of pressure on its characters up to an extraordinary ending all in 200 pages shows the hand of an expert novelist.