Charlotte Gray - Sebastian Faulks

In 1942, Charlotte Gray, a young Scottish woman, goes to occupied France on a dual mission: to run an apparently simple errand for a British Special Operations Group and to search for her lover, an English airman who has gone missing in action.

In the small town of Lavaurette, Sebastian Faulks presents a microcosm of France and its agony in 'The Black Years'.

In a series of shocking narrative climaxes in which the full extent of French collusion in the Nazi holocaust is delineated, Faulks brings the story to a resolution of redemptive love. In the delicacy of its writing, the intimacy of its characterisation and its powerful narrative scenes of harrowing public events, Charlotte Gray is a worthy successor to Birdsong.