Welsh Girl（ISBN=9780618918522）

Review
'A beautifully crafted, lyrical novel' -- Maggie O'Farrell, Observer Books of the Year 'Moving, memorable and beautifully written' -- Jessica Mann, Sunday Telegraph 'Deeply felt and vividly imagined' -- Lionel Shriver, Daily Telegraph 'Fresh and engaging ... Some sentences and passages are crafted so beautifully and seemingly effortlessly that it provokes envy.' -- David Cornett, Sunday Express 'Quietly powerful ... a fine piece of work' -- Stephen Knight, Times Literary Supplement 'His prose and the evocation of time and place are almost always of the highest order!he approaches the Second World War with a fresh and contemporary style, a gift that he shares with Kazuo Ishiguro' -- Russell Celyn Jones, The Times 'A scintillating instance of fictional imagination applied to history' -- Richard Eder, New York Times 'Impressive ... a compelling story in itself, but Davies's special skill lies in integrating conflicts that drive the narrative at a more intense level' -- Richard Gwyn, Independent --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

Set in the stunning landscape of North Wales just after D-Day, Peter Ho Davies's profoundly moving first novel traces the intersection of disparate lives in wartime. When a POW camp is established near her village, seventeen-year-old barmaid Esther Evans finds herself strangely drawn to the camp and its forlorn captives. She is exploring the camp boundary when the astonishing occurs: Karsten, a young German corporal, calls out to her from behind the fence. From that moment on, the two foster a secret relationship that will ultimately put them both at risk. Meanwhile, another foreigner, the German-Jewish interrogator Rotherham, travels to Wales to investigate Britain's most notorious Nazi prisoner, Rudolf Hess. In this richly drawn and thought-provoking work, all will come to question where they belong and where their loyalties lie.

Peter Ho Davies's first short story collection, THE UGLIEST HOUSE IN THE WORLD, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the PEN/Macmillan Prize. His second, EQUAL LOVE, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a New York Times Notable Book. In 2003 he was named among the 'Best of Young British Novelists' by Granta. He is currently director of the graduate program in creative writing at the University of Michigan. The son of a Welsh father and Chinese mother, Davies was raised in England and spent his summers in Wales. He is married with one son.