The Secret Purposes [Hardcover]

What might you expect in a novel such as The Secret Purposes from the talented David Baddiel? Apart from the laddishness of his Fantasy Football TV appearances with Frank Skinner, Baddiel has proved himself to be one of the sharpest and most perceptive of younger novelists, with a sympathetic understanding of human nature (perhaps we can blame Baddiel's TV persona on his co-compere, whose own literary efforts haven’t matched Baddiel's highly accomplished Time for Bed and Whatever Love Means). The earlier books were darkly comic pieces shot through with his trademark seriousness; the new book is a striking departure.

The subject is a hidden part of British history, treated with gravity: the internment of German Jewish refugees on the Isle of Man in the 1940s. June Murray is a translator who doesn’t share the unsympathetic incomprehension of her colleagues at the Ministry of Information, and travels to the Isle of Man in order to interview the Jews interned there. June hopes to expose the true horror of what the Nazis are doing, but her best efforts are wasted, and she can glean nothing. But her relationship with a man she meets, the highly intelligent (if ineffectual) Isaac Fabian, is to have a profound influence on her life and thinking--and nothing will be the same again for June, Isaac or his wife and daughter.

This is clearly a very personal subject for Baddiel, and he produced his most affecting and (in many ways) timely novel yet. Time and place are evoked with quite as much skill as the rich characterisation--June is a heroine to draw the reader ineluctably into the moving narrative.--Barry Forshaw

WHATEVER LOVE MEANS 'A thriller and a love story constructed with a sinister symmetry where everything comic is shadowed by something dark' - Chrissie Iley, Sunday Times 'A black, sometimes tender read ... impressive and intelligent' - The Times

'A well-written, interesting and earnest novel'

'An exuberant and compelling story of bigotry . . . it deserves to liberate its author entirely from the category of ''celebrity novelist'''

'A sombre, clever book, but, being Baddiel, is irradiated by flashes of dark humour'

'Moving . . . his tone is one of wry despair rather than outrage'

'An intriguing novel about history and truth . . . The intelligence and inquiry of this book will surprise many'

'Page-turning, cleverly constructed ... without losing either his sense of humour or his fluid style'

'A satisfying, brave novel'

'Reads like a more intelligent version of Sebastian Faulks'

'A vivid evocation of a Spartan, suspicious 1940s England and a luminous prototype feminist in the character of June'

THE SECRET PURPOSES, David Baddiel's third novel, takes us into a little-known and still somewhat submerged area of British history: the internment of German Jewish refugees on the Isle of Man during the Second World War. Isaac Fabian, on the run with his young family from Nazism in East Prussia, comes to Britain assuming he has found asylum, but instead finds himself drowning in the morass of ignorance, half-truth, prejudice, and suspicion that makes up government attitudes to German Jews in 1940. One woman, June Murray, a translator from the Ministry of Information, stands out - and when she comes to the island on a personal mission to uncover solid evidence of Nazi atrocities, her meeting with Isaac will have far-reaching consequences for both of them. A haunting and beautifully written tale of love, displacement and survival, THE SECRET PURPOSES profoundly questions the way that truth - both personal and political - emerges from the tangle of history.

Co-creator of three of the BBC's most successful comedy programmes, David Baddiel has proved himself an accomplished novelist (and critic) too.