The Girl Who Fell From the Sky

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Marian Sutro is an outsider: the daughter of a diplomat, brought up on the shores of Lake Geneva and in England, half French, half British, naive yet too clever for her own good. But when she is recruited from her desk job by SOE to go undercover in wartime France, it seems her hybrid status - and fluent French - will be of service to a greater, more dangerous cause. Trained in sabotage, dead-drops, how to perform under interrogation and how to kill, Marian parachutes into south-west France, her official mission to act as a Resistance courier. But her real destination is Paris, where she must seek out family friend Clément Pelletier, once the focus of her adolescent desires. A nuclear physicist engaged in the race for a new and terrifying weapon, he is of urgent significance to her superiors. As she struggles through the strange, lethal landscape of the Occupation towards this reunion, what completes her training is the understanding that war changes everything, and neither love nor fatherland may be trusted. The Girl Who Fell from the Sky is both a gripping adventure story and a moving meditation on patriotism, betrayal and the limits of love.ReviewIf you only read one novel this year, make it this one ... The evocation of this diminished and frightening Paris is masterly; I can't think it could have been better done ... Mawer cranks up the tension; this is as good as Le Carre ... I have rarely read a novel that made fear so acute, almost tangible' -- Allan Massie The Scotsman I read late into the night and cried a little when I was done. Mawer's set pieces are so beautiful you want to read them two or three times over. He writes about fear and about bravery better than any contemporary novelist I know -- Rachel Cooke Observer Gripping and moving in equal measure, Marian's story is unforgettable Spectator Mawer can certainly do suspense, but it transcends the limits of the genre Sunday Times A stirring adventure with a potent reflection on the allure of desire, duty and danger Evening Standard A genuinely great contemporary writer ... such rewarding reading -- Simon Schama Financial Times About the AuthorSimon Mawer was born in 1948 in England, and spent his childhood there, in Cyprus and in Malta. He has lived with his wife in Italy for more than 20 years, and he teaches at the English School in Rome.