About the Author

Sadie Jones is the author of four novels, including The Outcast, winner of the Costa First Novel Award in Great Britain and a finalist for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize/Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, Small Wars, and the bestselling The Uninvited Guests. She lives in London.

Reviews

Save for a tendency to drop his voice on the last syllable of each sentence, Stephen Hoye is a perfect narrator. His clear, dramatic voice engages an audience quickly and fully in this tense and moving story of the agonizing dilemmas of young Major Treherne, who faces increasingly conflicting duties to his men, his country, his wife and twin daughters, but also to the enemy's men and boys so badly brutalized by his own troops. Set in 1956 Cyprus during the bloody British battles against Greek Cypriots, this is a fine story, carefully hewn and beautifully narrated, that resounds poignantly with the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A Harper hardcover. (Mar.) Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.

"A stunning new novel.This richly imagined and warmly atmospheric story convincingly demonstrates that small wars, like all wars, are hell. This is historical fiction at its best. Highly recommended" -- Library Journal
"A thought-provoking meditation that powerfully evokes both the costs of waging war and the loving bonds of marriage" -- Booklist
"A darkly compelling account of honor and disillusionment with contemporary resonance...a confirmation of [Jones's] considerable talent."--Kirkus Reviews
"In lean, penetrating prose...Jones serves her themes most potently with an unflinching tumble of violent encounters that effectively transform Hal's liberation...into a haunting act of transcendence."--New York Times Book Review
"A taut and transfixing novel... [Jones is] a gifted young author."--Boston Globe
"Ambitious and thematically charged...A timely novel, as well as a harrowing one"--Christian Science Monitor
"To this grave account of degradation--from great wars to small, from certainty to doubt, from romance to resignation--Jones brings surprising reserves of energy and finesse."--Donna Rifkind, Washington Post