The new novel from the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Dark Room and A Boy in Winter 'Complex, intelligent, deeply compassionate . . . A brilliant piece of story-telling' ANDREW MILLER, Booker Prize-longlisted author of THE LAND IN WINTER 'This entire novel reverberates in ways that only haunt the reader more and more deeply, long after its last page' PAUL HARDING, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of THIS OTHER EDEN 'Searingly beautiful . . . powerful . . . Seiffert's writing beautifully captures this devastating moment of history' SPECTATOR To be truly alive means having to make choices. To be truly alive is also, quite simply, to love. Northern Germany, 1945. Dead of night and dead of winter, a boy hears soldiers and sees strangers - forced labourers - fleeing across the heathland by his small town: shawls and skirts in the snowfall. The end days are close, war brings risk and chance, and Benno is witness to something he barely understands. Peace brings more soldiers - but