Ladysmith

Description

'Captivating ... A highly accomplished historical novel' Washington Post 'Superbly described ... achieves a subtle, disconcerting effect' New York Review of Books In the dying days of the 19th century, the world's eyes turn to the small South African town of Ladysmith. Under siege from Boer forces, British soldiers and townsfolk wait for rescue. They try to keep their spirits up with parties and cricket matches, but General Buller's relief column cannot break through. All that arrives is danger, disease and starvation. Amongst a cast of characters ranging from Irish Republican renegades to London literary editors, from Churchill to Gandhi, is one young woman. For Bella Kiernan, the siege represents an unexpected chance to rebel against constricting social and domestic bonds and pursue a life of romance and adventure. From the bestselling author of THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND

Giles Foden was born in 1967 and spent much of his early life in Africa. For ten years, he was an editor and writer for the Times Literary Supplement and the Guardian, and his work has since been published in Granta, Vogue, Esquire, The New York Times and Conde Nast Traveller, where he is a contributing editor. His fiction includes THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND, ZANZIBAR, TURBULENCE and FREIGHT DOGS. THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND was made into an Oscar-winning feature film in 2006.

Captivating.... A highly accomplished historical novel * Washington Post * Skillful.... Precise affirming.... Foden creates a complex mosaic * Dallas Morning News * LADYSMITH is a haunting, disturbing novel-not only about how things were in a long-forgotten war, but how that war made us what we are * Independent * Once again Giles Foden has carried out an exacting program of reading and research * New York Review of Books * The engine that keeps this novel in motion is not just the progress of the siege but the sense of lives lived before and afterward, of events and the memory of events slanting away into the steepening perspectives of age * New York Review of Books *