Snowleg by Nicholas Shakespeare
The new and long-awaited novel from the author of Bruce Chatwin and The Dancer Upstairs. A gripping tale of a guilty conscience and a family secret, and a young man's quest for reconciliation.
A young Englishman visits Cold War Leipzig with a group of students and, during his brief excursion behind the Iron Curtain, falls for an East German girl who is only just beginning to wake up to the way her society is governed. Her situation touches him, but he is too frightened to help.
He spends the next 17 years pretending to himself that he is not in love until one day, with Germany now united, he decides to go back and look for her. But who was she, how will his actions have affected her and how will he find her? All he knows of her identity is the nickname he gave to her - Snowleg.
Nicholas Shakespeare's first novel since The Dancer Upstairs is a powerful love story that explores the close, fraught relationship between England and Germany, between a man who grows up believing himself to be a chivalrous English public-schoolboy and a woman who tries to live loyally under a regime where every move is not only recorded, but where a person's scent may be secretly bottled, labeled and stored away until such time as she needs to be traced.
Format: Paperback | 320 pages
Dimensions (cm): 23.4 x 15.3 x 2.9 | 628g
Publication Date: 02 Feb 2004
Publisher: Random House
Imprint: Harvill Press
Publication City/Country: London, United Kingdom
Language: English
Edition Number: 1
ISBN10: 1843431947
ISBN13: 9781843431947
Condition: Good
A vintage book that has been read but is in good condition. Some minor damage to the cover including minor scuff marks and creasing along the edges, but no holes or tears. The majority of pages are undamaged with minimal creasing but no tearing. No pencil underlining of text, no highlighting of text and no writing in margins. All pages are bordered by a faint discolouring. No missing pages.