Author: Pickering, Paul

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 15 July 2024 by Salt Publishing in the United Kingdom as part of ‘the Salt Modern Fiction’ series.

Paperback | 336 pages, No
197 x 128 x 25 | 296g

Paul Pickerings new anti-war novel Lucy is about obedience and rebellion, how one survivor in the actual and moral wasteland of immediate post-war Berlin takes over the lives of three others, psychologically and sexually, in the way Hitler took over a country.The worldwide protests surrounding the 2024 conflict in Gaza mirror the rebel spirit at the heart of Pickerings important, groundbreaking novel. Set partly in a German kibbutz, started by Nazis to remove Jews, there is a clash between utopian ideas and the toxic nationalism necessary to found the state of Israel. Operation Lucy, once an idealistic, anti-Nazi espionage ring, of which all the main characters are part, has become a self-devouring monster.Lucy is darkly comic, showing how best intentions, when they pass through the looking-glass of human failings, change to the opposite. Joseph Hellers Catch-22 means no escape because of contradictory rules, Lucy is the Lucifer paradox, where the only good is bad, and only bad is good.

A thrilling, disturbing and utterly compelling read from one of the UKs most celebrated authors.