Hubert Mingarelli – författare

Dinslaken, Germany 1945. The war is over, leaving behind a broken nation. As the allied forces begin to uncover the horrors of the Holocaust, a war photographer makes the decision to capture the lives of the ordinary German people. Accompanied by his driver, the young and vulnerable O'Leary, the pair set off on a journey, one that changes both their lives forever. The Invisible Land is a story of the moral and emotional repercussions of violence, complicity and its aftermath.

One morning, in the dead of winter, three German soldiers head out into the frozen Polish countryside. They have been charged by their commanders to track down and bring back for execution 'one of them' - a Jew. Having flushed out a young man hiding in the woods, they decide to rest in an abandoned house before continuing their journey back to the camp. As they prepare food, they are joined by a passing Pole whose virulent anti-Semitism adds tension to an already charged atmosphere. Before long, the group's sympathies begin to splinter as each man is forced to confront his own conscience as the moral implications of their murderous mission become clear.

LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2019'I am astonished by Four Soldiers. I have never read anything like it, yet it is one of those books you feel must always have existed, a classic of writing about the human condition... A small miracle' Hilary Mantel1919. The Russian Civil War. It is the harsh dead of winter, as four soldiers set up camp in a forest somewhere near the Romanian front line. There is a lull in the fighting, so their days are filled with precious hours of freedom, enjoying the tranquillity of a nearby pond and trying to forget their terrifying nightmares, all the while talking, smoking and waiting. Waiting for spring to come, waiting for their battalion to move on, waiting for the inevitable resumption of violence. Tightly focused and simply told, this is a story of friendship and the fragments of happiness that can illuminate the darkness of war.