In The Light of Morning

Tim Pears

In The Light of Morning

A carefully paced novel set in Yugoslavia in 1944, In the Light of Morning follows the youthful and idealistic Lieutenant Tom Freedman, an Oxford linguist recruited into a conflict which is one part liberation struggle and one part civil war. The “reflective” Freedman is the sort of man in favour with the “back-room boys”. However, it is exactly this thoughtfulness which leaves his cloistered, academic sense of identity vulnerable to the political and sexual challenges he is about to face.

Though this is the first historical novel from an author best known for stories of familial discord, Pears has misplaced none of his ability to conjure affecting and realistic scenarios. There is no sentimentality here. There is no shying away from the horrors of war or the depravities suffered by its participants. Personal betrayals fly as readily as bullets. Trust is a concept tested in safe-houses and by stolen hearts in a heavily forested battleground occupied by the Third Reich and patrolled by the Crna Roka, or Black Hand, a kind of Slovenian Black-and-Tans recruited from “criminals and thugs”.

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