Patricia Wastvedt

The German Boy is the latest novel from the author of The River, which was longlisted for the Orange prize. It beautifully tells the moving story of two families entangled by love and friendship,  divided by prejudice and war, and of a brief encounter between a woman  and a man that touched each of their lives forever.

In 1947, Elisabeth Mander’s German nephew comes to stay. Stefan Landau, her dead sister’s teenage son, whom she hates and loves before she’s even set eyes on him. Orphaned by the war and traumatised by the final vicious battles of the Hitler Youth, Stefan brings with him to England only a few meagre possessions. Among them is a portrait of a girl with long copper hair by a young painter called Michael Ross — and with it the memory, both painful and precious, of her life and that time between the wars.

Join us for an insight into this incredibly powerful novel.