Of Loss and Hope

Here are two beautifully written and meticulously researched new novels. Alison Pick’s Booker-longlisted novel, Far to Go, is set in the months leading up to Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia where the Bauer family are wrestling with the prospect of sending six year old Pepik on the kindertransport to England. The young traveller in Jake Wallis Simons’ The English German Girl, Rosa, is fifteen. Upon leaving Berlin she is faced with the tremendous burden of securing papers to help the rest of her family escape. Join two of the hottest new names on the literary scene for a conversation about loss, hope and legacy

Alison Pick won the Canadian 2002 Bronwen Wallace Award for the most promising writer under thirty-five. She has published two collections of poetry and a novel, The Sweet Edge – all critical successes. In Far To Go she draws upon her grandparents’ journey from their native Czechoslovakia to Canada during WWII.

Jake Wallis Simon is a novelist, journalist and broadcaster. His first novel – The Exiled Times of a Tibetan Jew – was an Independent on Sunday Book of the Year. His second – The English German Girl – was a Fiction Uncovered winner. The Pure, his forthcoming first thriller, concerns a renegade Mossad agent and is based in London.

Claire Armitstead is The Guardian's literary editor.

In association with Youth Aliah Child Rescue