A Partisan's Daughter by Louis de Bernieres

My Account
Logout

Create an Evening Standard Account

Use your social network

Save time by using your existing account to sign in to Evening Standard

We'll never share your information or post anything to your account without your permission

Welcome! Sign in here

Use your social network

Save time by using your existing account to sign in to Evening Standard

We'll never share your information or post anything to your account without your permission

Forgot your password ?

Registration

* indicates fields that are mandatory

Email *

Password *

Confirm Password *

First name *

Surname *

Postcode *

Country *

Mobile phone number

Username *

Gender *

Year of birth *

When you sign up...

You will have access to all our online competitions, discounted offers and can post comments on our site.

You will also receive The Weekender newsletter sent every Thursday - it’s full of fantastic offers and ideas for the weekend. You can update your email preferences in your account page when you log in.

Other newsletters and emails

Homes & Property Newsletter - Yes I want to receive the weekly email with all the latest news on property in the capital

Occasionally we would also like to send you relevant emails detailing specific offers either from ourselves or carefully selected partners. If you would prefer not to receive these then please tick the appropriate boxes below. We will never pass on your details.

I do not want to receive additional offers and information from the Evening Standard

I do not want to receive additional offers and information sent by Evening Standard on behalf of carefully selected partners

Terms and Conditions

* I have read, understood and agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of Evening Standard

Registration

Mail Sent for Registration Confirmation.

A confirmation email has been sent. Please activate your account by clicking on the activation link sent in your mail box.

In this brief novel, Chris, a sad old man, remembers a brief period of his life when he was a sad middle-aged man. We see him, aged 40, during the Winter of Discontent. He's the ultimate suburbanite, with a dull job as a salesman and a terrible marriage. He calls his wife "the Great White Loaf". One day, he finds himself kerb-crawling — for the first time, he tells us. A likely story, you may think. Anyway, the girl says she isn't a hooker, and they become friends and, afterwards, more than friends.

This girl, Roza, is a displaced Serb. She tells Chris lots of tall tales about her sex life. Chris becomes smitten and, eventually, demented with lust. It's a sweet story, though, partly because both Chris and Roza are too shy to consummate their relationship, and it's not long before you know, in your bones, that it will end tragically.

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk

The new novel from the acclaimed author of "Birds Without Wings" and Captain Corelli's "Mandolin" is a love story at once raw and sweetly funny, wry and heartbreakingly sad. Chris is bored, lonely, trapped in a loveless, sexless marriage. In his forties, he's a stranger to the 1970s youth culture of London, a stranger to himself on the night he invites a hooker into his car. Roza is Yugoslavian, recently moved to London, the daughter of one of Tito's partisans. She's in her twenties, but has already lived a life filled with danger, misadventure, romance, and tragedy. And though she's not a hooker, when she's propositioned by Chris, she gets into his car anyway.Over the next few months Roza tells Chris the stories of her past. She's a fast-talking Scheherazade, saving her own life by telling it to Chris. And he takes in her tales as if they were oxygen in an otherwise airless world. But is Roza telling the truth? Does Chris hear the stories through the filter of his own need? Does it even matter? The deeply moving novel of their unlikely love - narrated in the moment and through recollection, each of their voices deftly realized - is also a brilliantly subtle commentary on storytelling: its seductions and powers, and its ultimately unavoidable dangers.