Friends And Heroes: The Balkan Trilogy 3

Description

The last book in Olivia Manning's critically acclaimed The Balkan Trilogy 'So glittering is the overall parade - and so entertaining the surface - that the trilogy remains excitingly vivid' - Sunday Times 'Wonderfully entertaining' - Observer Athens, 1941. Harriet Pringle feverishly awaits news of her husband, trapped in the spoilt city of Bucharest. Yet when the young couple are reunited, Guy once again becomes absorbed in his work, leading Harriet to seek the attention of a handsome young officer. But when Greece is defeated and Europe starts to crumble around them, Guy and Harriet are forced to find a new strength amidst the devastation. Manning's exquisite observations on love, marriage and friendship during wartime are brought vibrantly to life.

Olivia Manning, OBE, was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, spent much of her youth in Ireland and, as she puts it, had 'the usual Anglo-Irish sense of belonging nowhere'. The daughter of a naval officer, she produced her first novel, The Wind Changes, in 1937. She married just before the War and went abroad with her husband, R.D. Smith, a British Council lec-turer in Bucharest. Her experiences there formed the basis of the work which makes up The Balkan Trilogy. As the Germans approached Athens, she and her husband evacuated to Egypt and ended up in charge of the Palestine Broadcasting Station. They returned to London in 1946 and lived there until her death in 1980.

Magnificent ... full of wit, sharp insight and vivid description. * The Times * Wonderfully entertaining * Observer * A fantastically tart and readable account of life in eastern Europe at the start of the war -- Sarah Waters So glittering is the overall parade ... and so entertaining the surface that the trilogy remains excitingly vivid; it amuses, it diverts and it informs, and to do these things so elegantly is no small achievement' * Sunday Times * One most salute the brilliance ... the exactness of sights and sounds, the precise touches of light and scent, the gestures and entrances. * Guardian *