The Letter Bearer: A Novel

by Robert Allison

Overview

The Rider has no memory of who he is, where he is, or how he came to be lying—dying— in the brutal heat of the North African desert. Rescued by a band of deserters, the Rider begins to piece together his identity, based on shards of recollection and the letters in his mailbag. The Letter Bearer is unlike any other novel of World War Two. In the midst of profound trauma, terrible warfare, and the nameless experience of desertion, this gripping story asks us to consider how men build hope when they have nothing left—not even a name.



When first published last year in London, Robert Allison's debut novel was met with wide praise and was nominated for the Desmond Elliott Prize, described by one of its judges as "'An excellent and elegant novel written with patience and authority . . ." Readers of Michael Ondaatje and Paul Bowles will find the landscape familiar, but no reader will ever forget the haunting and haunted story of this remarkable victim.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781619029040
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	02/14/2017
Edition description:	First Trade Paper Edition
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Robert Allison has been a theatre director, a film and music reviewer and a copy–editor. He lives in London.

Editorial Reviews

"Daringly, debut novelist Allison makes the story all his own....Allison's tale has an almost hypnotic inevitability that unfolds as the rider shifts his viewpoint from unknown past to an unknowable future in which "I shall become everything expected of me." Elegantly and exactingly written. A touch ponderous at times but oddly—beg pardon—unforgettable."—Kirkus, Starred Review

"This is a tremendous second world war novel. With thickets of intense, opaque prose and some striking, hallucinatory descriptions of the desert... Allison writes powerfully – often thrillingly – about the nitty–gritty of conflict. A finely crafted debut." —Financial Times

"Allison's debut is a beautifully written investigation into alienation, guilt and the will to survive. The desert is a character itself, brilliantly alive and vividly depicted. This is a gripping exploration of one man's travails – and through him, those of millions other men trapped in the terrible mechanism of war." —Independent

"The novel is insightful in its development of character and the interaction of the small group of fellow–travellers amongst whom the Rider finds himself."—Historical Novel Society

"One of those rare novels that merits a second reading." —Paul Bailey

"Infused with the head and dust of the North African desert, this is a haunting, lyrical novel that hovers in the mind like a glittering mirage, long after it has finished." —Roma Tearne

From the Publisher

12/07/2015
In Allison’s poetic first novel, which breathes fresh life into World War II fiction, an English rider is blown off his motorcycle in the North African desert, his only possession a mailbag. Badly wounded, with no memory and no identification on his person, he is eventually found by a group of deserters—an officer, a driver, and a medic, all British, and a Canadian tanker and an Italian POW—who take him in and see to his wounds. When his memory fails to return, the rider goes through the mailbag and begins reading letters in the hopes that one of them will jog his memory. Once spotted, the deserters decide to move on and head for possible safety in the Akhdar Mountains. Along the way, they acquire an abandoned American tank and are forced to contend with German patrols, hostile local tribesmen, Italian stragglers, and their own internecine conflicts. Amid it all, the rider, not trusted by his fellow travelers, fights to regain his memory and set a course for himself. The narrative is filled with harrowing confrontations and memorable scenes illustrating the follies of war, all punctuated by heart-shattering letters between soldiers and their loved ones back home. This novel is ultimately a stunning combination of muscular action and penetrating self-examination. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 2015-10-08
A mysterious man tries to find himself while traversing a hellish landscape of war. Amnesia is a tried-and-true trope, so much so that it risks being a cliché: everyone from Hitchcock to Ishiguro and Modiano has used it in recent—beg pardon—memory. The reader may despair, then, on being thrust into a scenario involving an amnesiac motorcycle messenger who, having apparently been left for dead, battered and banged up nearly as badly as Laszlo de Almásy of English Patient fame, now finds himself among a band of deserters picking their way around the great armies clashing in the North African desert. Throw in some of the rarified, apocalyptic language of Cormac McCarthy ("A sudarium wrought in the sanguine and phlegmatic humours"; "Perhaps in this ruined state he will live out the last of his time, inanimate, a pedlar of gazes"), mix in some of the good-versus-evil dualism of Moby-Dick, and you have all the possibilities of a derivative hash. Yet, daringly, debut novelist Allison makes the story all his own. His rider—for so, until the penultimate page, is the protagonist known—is a man in search of self-recognition, looking for clues in the bag of letters he carries, but he is also keenly observant of the conflicts among nations and within the part-piratical, part-saintly band of brothers he's fallen in with. Some are named, and some of their names will soon appear on grave markers; others are simply tagged, such as the "dying man" the rider converses with (about, among other things, dog breeds) in the austere landscape of the Sahara, which is as much a character here as any of the human players. Allison's tale has an almost hypnotic inevitability that unfolds as the rider shifts his viewpoint from unknown past to an unknowable future in which "I shall become everything expected of me." Elegantly and exactingly written. A touch ponderous at times but oddly—beg pardon—unforgettable.

Kirkus Reviews