Everyone carries the weight of WWII with them in their recent family history, and yet it is rarely spoken about within families, because veterans and survivors don’t tend to talk.
I write in the novel’s afterword that our recent wars “finish not with victory or defeat but with a calendar draw-down date and a presumption that we shall never be reconciled with the enemy”.
Death, of course, is a refuge. It’s where you go when a new name, or a mask and cape, can no longer hide you from yourself. It’s where you run to when none of the principalities of your conscience will grant you asylum.
