Vanishing

Gerard Woodward

Vanishing is the story of Kenneth Brill, an unsuccessful artist who, towards the end of the Second World War, finds himself in a British prison charged with treason. He’s been accused of concealing in his landscape paintings vital information about a new military aerodrome - Heathrow - that will shortly be expanding over the countryside of his childhood. The rest of the book seeks to explain through his own eyes how he got here, and cleverly poses the question: Is Brill a spy or a misunderstood artist?

Brill has had the sort of war that can be seen in two very different ways. As a camouflage officer, was he a hero of El Alamein or a conniving double agent? Was his presence at the rural community run by an eccentric Nazi aristocrat the result of mental breakdown?