A Question Of Loyalties (Canongate classics)
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Product Description
Product Description
This superb book engages with all the complexities and ambiguities of loyalty, nationality, love and duty as they are put under threat by betrayal, by errors of judgement, or just by friendship in the historical wound that was occupied France. Etienne de Balafre, half French, half English and raised in South Africa, returns to post-war France to unravel the tangled history of his own father Lucien - was he a patriot who may have served his country as best he could in difficult times, or a treacherous collaborator in the Vichy government? This subtle and moving novel, rife with the anguish of hindsight and the irony of circumstance, explores the ties between fathers and sons and the pains of love and duty in a period in European history that is still characterised by wilful denial and hatred.
About the Author
ALLAN MASSIE was born in Singapore in 1938, brought up in Aberdeenshire and educated in Glenalmond and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read History. He has written more than twenty books including a series of historical novels set in ancient Rome. Allan Massie is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in the Scottish Borders with his wife and three children.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
30 of 31 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a very well written novel, exploring the nature of loyalty and collaboration and the difficult choices people have to make. No doubt many people in France had to make such choices in 1940 and it was never easy, but I did feel that the author, through his characters, was a little TOO soft on the adherents of the Vichy regime. I found the characters mostly rather unsympathetic. The attitude of so many French people at this time is vividly drawn and depressing - a mixture of fatalism at the impending German invasion and grudging respect for German success, plus an alarming level of anti-semitism among ordinary French people. This was certainly not an uplifting read, though very thought provoking.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This excellent novel provides remarkable insight into a very difficult period. The challenges of managing to survive in the lethal atmosphere of Vichy France are brilliantly described by Alan Massie. There was no opportunity, unless for the suicidal, to be uncompromising with the German presence. The activities of the underground which will no doubt become more evident as the series continues will always be nuanced by internal politics and external division between a number of factions.
A superb, if tense, read.
A superb, if tense, read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Other positive reviews led me to this novel. It has a potentially interesting plot, but did not live up to expectations. To me the book was spoiled by strained and excessive dialogue together with unbelievable (although predictable) characterisations. It is difficult to expand without exposing the storyline - suffice to say I found it a disappointment.
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