Author(s): Christopher Priest

Fiction

Christopher Priest's finest novel in his 30-year-career as an award-winning writer; an emotionally riveting story of how the small man can make a difference. The Separation is the story of twin brothers, who are rowers in the 1936 Olympics; one joins the RAF, and captains a Wellington; he is shot down after a bombing raid on Hamburg and becomes Churchill's aide-de-camp; his twin brother becomes a pacifist. The twist is that this is really an alternate history: the two brothers - both called J.L. Sawyer - live their lives in alternate versions of reality. In one, the Second World War ends as we imagine it did; in the other, the war ends in 1941. The Separation is an emotionally riveting story of how the small man can make a difference; it's a savage critique of Winston Churchill, the man credited as the saviour of Britain and the Western World, and it's a story of how one perceives and shapes the past.