Overview

The New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Room brings a slice of his own family history to life through extensive research and rich storytelling. Beginning with his great-great-grandfather Abraham Block, acclaimed novelist Simon Mawer sifts through evidence like an archaeologist, piecing together the stories of his ancestors. Illiterate and lacking opportunity in the bleak Suffolk village where his parents worked as agricultural laborers, Abraham leaves home at fifteen, in 1847. He signs away the next five years in an indenture aboard a ship, which will circuitously lead him to London and well beyond, to far-flung ports on the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. In London he crosses paths with Naomi Lulham, a young seamstress likewise seeking a better life in the city, with all its prospects and temptations. Another branch of the family tree comes together in 1847, in Manchester, as soldier George Mawer weds his Irish bride Ann Scanlon--Annie--before embarking with his regiment. When he is called to fight in the Crimean War, Annie must fend for herself and her children on a meager income, navigating an often hostile world as a woman alone. With a keen eye and a nuanced consideration of the limits of what we can know about the past, Mawer paints a compelling, intimate portrait of life in the nineteenth century.

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"""Mawer writes movingly about the privations of military life and the hardships endured by women in the Victorian era. His prose is measured and elegant."" -- ""Sunday Times (UK)"" ""Utterly absorbing...so cleverly constructed and beautifully written."" -- ""The Times (UK)"""

Mawer writes movingly about the privations of military life and the hardships endured by women in the Victorian era. His prose is measured and elegant. -- Sunday Times (UK) Utterly absorbing...so cleverly constructed and beautifully written. -- The Times (UK)

Author Information

Simon Mawer is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Glass Room, which was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. His other novels include The Fall, which won the Boardman Tasker Prize; The Gospel of Judas; and Mendel's Dwarf, which was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. English by birth, he has made Italy his home for more than thirty years. Simon Vance is the critically acclaimed narrator of approximately 400 audiobooks, winner of 27 AudioFile Earphones Awards, and a 12-time Audie Award-winner. He won an Audie in 2006 in the category of Science Fiction and was named the 2011 Best Voice in Biography and History and in 2010 Best Voice in Fiction by AudioFile magazine. Vance has been a narrator for the past 25 years, and also worked for many years as a BBC Radio presenter and newsreader in London. Some of his best-selling and most praised audiobook performances include Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies (an Audie award-winner), Ian Fleming's Casino Royale, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander series (all 21 titles), the new productions of Frank Herbert's original Dune series, and Rob Gifford's China Road (an AudioFile 2007 Book of the Year). Vance lives near San Francisco with his wife and two sons.

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