Arthur C. Clarke Award
British Science Fiction Association
In 1999, history author Stuart Gratton is intrigued by a minor mystery of the European war which ended on 10 May 1941. The British-German armistice signed that month has had far-reaching consequences, including a resettlement of European Jews in Madagascar.
In 1936, the identical twin brothers Joe and Jack Sawyer win a rowing medal for Britain in the Berlin Olympics: it's presented to them by Rudolf Hess. The brothers are separated not only by a twin's fierce need "to be treated as a separate human being", but by sexual rivalry and even ideology. When war breaks out Jack becomes a gung-ho bomber pilot, Joe a conscientious objector. Still they're inescapably linked, and sometimes confused. Both suffer injuries and hauntingly similar ambulance journeys. Churchill writes a puzzled memo (later unearthed by Gratton) about the anomaly of a registered-pacifist Red Cross worker flying planes for Bomber Command. Hess has significant, eventually incompatible meetings with both men. Contradictions are everywhere.
As in his magical 1995 novel The Prestige Priest is fruitfully fascinated by the legerdemain of twins, doubles, impostors, symmetrical roles. Churchill's double briefly appears. So does the famous conspiracy theory that the Hess who flew to Britain with his quixotic peace deal wasn't the real Hess ring true? Clearly The Separation was impressively, extensively researched. Its evocations of bombing raids--from either side of the bombsights--are memorable.
The unfolding story strands become increasingly disorienting and hallucinatory; the easy escape route of dismissing one strand as delusion is itself subtly undermined. The Separation is filled with a sense of the precariousness of history; of small events and choices with extraordinary consequences. --David Langford
The Road Cormac McCarthy | Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, book 1) Richard Morgan | Roma Eterna Robert Silverberg | Revelation Space (Revelation Space, book 1) Alastair Reynolds |
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Hardback Editions
| Title: The Separation Author(s):: Christopher Priest ISBN: 1882968336 / 9781882968336 (USA edition) Publisher: Old Earth Books Availability: Amazon CA Amazon Amazon UK |
| Title: The Separation Author(s):: Christopher Priest ISBN: 0575070021 / 9780575070028 (UK edition) Publisher: Gollancz Availability: Amazon UK Amazon Amazon CA |
| Title: The Separation Author(s):: Christopher Priest ISBN: 0743208366 / 9780743208369 (USA edition) Publisher: Simon & Schuster Availability: Amazon UK |
Paperback Editions
| Title: The Separation Author(s):: Christopher Priest ISBN: 057507003X / 9780575070035 (UK edition) Publisher: Gollancz Availability: Amazon UK Amazon Amazon CA |
| Title: The Separation (GollanczF.) Author(s):: Christopher Priest ISBN: 0575081155 / 9780575081154 (UK edition) Publisher: Gollancz Availability: Amazon CA Amazon UK Amazon |
| Title: The Separation (GollanczF.) Author(s):: Christopher Priest ISBN: 0575070145 / 9780575070141 (UK edition) Publisher: Gollancz Availability: Amazon CA Amazon UK Amazon |
| Title: The Separation (Gollancz SF S.) Author(s):: Christopher Priest ISBN: 0575070137 / 9780575070134 (UK edition) Publisher: Gollancz Availability: Amazon CA Amazon UK Amazon |
| Title: The Separation Author(s):: Christopher Priest ISBN: 0743208374 / 9780743208376 (USA edition) Publisher: Scribner Availability: Amazon Amazon UK Amazon CA |
| Title: The Separation Author(s):: Christopher Priest ISBN: 0743220331 / 9780743220330 (USA edition) Publisher: Scribner Availability: Amazon CA Amazon Amazon UK |
Kindle Editions
| Title: The Separation Author(s):: Christopher Priest ISBN: B005LWQCJ0 Publisher: Gateway Availability: Amazon UK |
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