If the Invader Comes

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1841155918 ISBN 13: 9781841155913

Publisher: Fourth Estate Ltd, 2001

Clarice Pike and Vic Warren are from completely different backgrounds. An impossible affair has already driven them thousands of miles apart. 1939 finds Clarice in Malaya, and Vic in East London. As their feelings conspire to draw the lovers back together, the world erupts with a terrible violence.

About the Author:

Derek Beaven lives in Maidenhead, Berkshire. His first novel, Newton's Niece (1994) was shortlisted for the Writers' Guild Best Novel Prize and won a Commonwealth Prize. His second, Acts of Mutiny (1998) was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize.

Review:

`Offers reminders of Graham Greene's "The End of the Affair"...[A] powerful, sharply conceived novel.' The Times `The novel's chief strength derives from a psychological delicacy: a file of scrupulously observed temperaments, ground down by circumstance, expressing themselves in dialogue pitched just on the right side of fracture. Beaven excels, too, in descriptions of physical sensation...All the abilities shown in his excellent second novel, "Acts of Mutiny", are well to the fore.' D.J. Taylor, Independent `This is the kind of fiction we like...Beaven imagines the war background so completely that you almost forget what actually happened...[he] shows it as clear as a Vermeer mirror.' David Robertson, Scotsman `Large, deft, prickly and ambitious. Beaven weaves a highly convincing and alarming picture of a country sinking into a state of war. You believe in everything Beaven tells you because his work practically explodes with narrative assurance.' Julie Myerson, Guardian