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    Of Love and Other Wars
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    Of Love and Other Wars
    Unavailable
    Of Love and Other Wars
    Ebook333 pages5 hours

    Of Love and Other Wars

    By Sophie Hardach

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    London, 1937. The profoundly moving story of a Quaker family and a Jewish family in love and at war during WWII.

    At a rally in the Royal Albert Hall, two Quaker brothers, Paul and Charlie Lamb, sign a pledge of peace that only one of them will honour. Meanwhile, in a draughty Victorian mansion in Hampstead, Mr. Morningstar wonders why his wife, a crystallographer from dynasty of diamond cutters, turns into a cursing somnambulist at night, while their daughter, Miriam, comes home from her shifts at the munitions factory with her stockings inside out.

    As the streets throng with khaki, the Lambs and the Morningstars must decide how to do good in a world transformed by evil. Should a scientist use her skills to maximise civilian casualties? Should a Quaker stand by as millions are murdered? And is it possible to love someone if you hate their convictions?

    When the two families are torn apart by war, Paul is forced to choose between his conscience and the woman he loves.

    Of Love and Other Warsis a profoundly moving tale of faith, longing, and decisions made in the split second of silence between bullets, whose repercussions last a lifetime. With distinctive flair and dazzling creative energy, Sophie Hardach pulls us into lives upended by betrayal, violence and passion.

    'Tender and absorbing. An intriguing glimpse into the pacifist's world' Esther Freud

    'Poignant without ever being sentimental, morally complex and deftly woven - this is a book that gets better and better with every chapter' Gavin Extence, author of The Universe versus Alex Woods
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster UK
    Release dateAug 29, 2013
    ISBN9780857201348
    Unavailable
    Of Love and Other Wars
    Author

    Sophie Hardach

    Sophie Hardach is the author of three novels, The Registrar's Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages, about Kurdish refugees, Of Love and Other Wars, about pacifists during World War Two, and Confession with Blue Horses, about the repercussions of the division of Germany on the lives of individuals. Also a journalist, she worked as a correspondent for Reuters news agency in Tokyo, Paris and Milan and and has written for a number of publications including the Guardian, BBC Future and The Economist. Her first non-fiction book, Languages Are Good For Us, was published by Head of Zeus in 2021.

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    Reviews for Of Love and Other Wars

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    • 3/5
      "I hope I would have the faith and strength of mind to peacefully resist and dissuade him."Quaker brothers Charlie and Paul Lamb are caught up in the pacifist movement, then called to account for their actions when they register as conscientious objectors. For Paul's girlfriend Miriam Morningstar, his actions are less palatable - and Miriam's mother has plenty of her own demons to face.This *really* picked up towards the end. I posted a few weeks ago that I wasn't very enthused about this? Well, by the end it still didn't make my list of favourites but I broke through and finished it. (the fact that I had to break through to finish it is perhaps not the biggest compliment towards the book...) But suddenly it all got much more interesting - the strands started to come together, the end of the war was in sight.Paul Lamb was by far the more sympathetic brother - Charlie is rambunctious and impetuous and a little too clever for his own good, convinced of his actions to run his life however he likes with little thought for others. Paul is much more gentle, more secure in his faith but less able to articulate it intelligently. Miriam is confident and likeable and impassioned - a pleasant blend of the two brothers. In the alternative timeline, I felt I should like Esther (as a fellow young female physicist from a specific minority religion - or at least I used to match all those adjectives), but she comes across as so hard and with so little love for her husband, so little rationality behind some of her personal interactions, that I found it very hard to support her perspective. I think I'd have enjoyed this a lot more if I had identified with one or more of the characters, but I found them all rather remote.Obviously I didn't live through WWII London but this felt pretty credibly set - the geography seemed to flow (although they are areas of London that I don't know that well) and the time was vivid - particularly Miriam's experiences in wartime London and Charlie's life on the farm.This is the first novel I've come across addressing life from either a Quaker or pacifist perspective, and I was quite surprised to find it was written by a German who had little experience of either in her personal life - it's a very unusual perspective to take.