The Separation

by Christopher Priest

Researching the war between Britain and Nazi Germany, which ended in May 1941, historian Stuart Gratton becomes intrigued by the enigma of J. L. Sawyer, an obscure figure who played a key part in bringing the conflict to its conclusion. As he digs deeper, he discovers there were two J. L. Sawyers – identical twins Jack and Joe, one a bomber pilot and the other a conscientious objector – divided both by their love for the same woman and their attitudes towards the war. But as the brothers’ story emerges from books, letters, and diaries, the evidence does not all add up, and there may be an even wider separation between them – divergent realities, in which different possibilities and unexpected truths emerge, and nothing is quite what it seems.

Both a brilliant historical novel about World War II and one of the best works of alternate history ever written, Christopher Priest’s The Separation earned the Arthur C. Clarke and BSFA Awards and ranks among his finest achievements. Like his classics The Affirmation and The Prestige, it is an engrossing literary puzzle that will keep readers turning the pages until its startling conclusion.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Alternate History, Historical Fiction, Fantasy, War, World War II

405 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Christopher Priest was born in Cheshire, England. He began writing soon after leaving school and has been a full-time freelance writer since 1968.

He published eleven novels, four short story collections and a number of other books, including critical works, biographies, novelizations and children’s non-fiction.

He also wrote drama for radio (BBC Radio 4) and television (Thames TV and HTV). In 2006, The Prestige was made into a major production by Newmarket Films. Directed by Christopher Nolan, The Prestige went straight to No.1 US box office. It received two Academy Award nominations. Other novels, including Fugue for a Darkening Island and The Glamour, are currently in preparation for filming.

He was Vice-President of the H. G. Wells Society. In 2007, an exhibition of installation art based on his novel The Affirmation was mounted in London.

As a journalist he wrote features and reviews for The Times, the Guardian, the Independent, the New Statesman, the Scotsman, and many different magazines.

Reviews

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic Christopher Priest.

With one caveat: Don't start here if you're new to him!

His Prestige is a great novel on its own, but that popular novel doesn't come all that near to the wide-wide ranging preoccupation with the Other place described in most of his other novels. And to be sure, there's a common theme in this one with those others.

Never-ending war. Lies and propaganda. Twins. Faulty memory. Strange, unexplainable events. Airplanes.

And above all, HISTORY. We *might* be spending some time in that other place. That alternate reality so hauntingly like our own. But in this past around WWII, all the names and people are pretty much the same... however... I think this is where the real separation happens between our history and the Other happens. I'm guessing because Priest never puts us in the shoes of people who ever really KNOW anything. They're just living their lives and surviving as they can. But for us, the Readers, we're locked in a hellishly fascinating struggle with separating OUR history with what THEIR history is doing.

Priest is kinda masterful here. He knows and has researched an AMAZING amount to give us this. But nothing is very obvious. Except for when it is, of course. :) All this is fantastic icing on the cake. At the core of it, we have our estranged twin brothers who devote themselves to living very different lives. One is a pro-war Bomber for England and the other is a Conscientious Objector working for the Red Cross. Their own separation and the similar wounds and circumstances they find themselves in at various points seem custom-made to paste them back together no matter how much they strive to separate themselves.

Their story is rather awesome all by itself, but it only gets better when we tick off all the fantastic mirroring techniques going on across all History, alternate dimensions, and the author's own predilections. :) As with all those other books I mentioned. :) They shine like signposts to us in this novel, giving us all the hints we need...

As long as we don't START here. :)

I'm rather flabbergasted. :) It's always a treat. :) A very, VERY smart treat. :)

[Fiona · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is one of my greatest sadnesses, as of about two hours ago when I finished this book, that I am not as good as Christopher Priest. For he is bloody good and an absolute madman.

Twenty pages into this book, he rewrote the Second World War. Then he rewrote it again, I forget how many times but it was lots. I got to the first twist and immediately couldn't put the book down for nearly six hours. I think I must have read about two thirds of it in one day. He writes very well, and the plot and the writing are both very easy to get caught up in. My kind of story.

[Merl Fluin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alternate history isn't really my bag, especially not alternate histories of WW2. But this swept me along thanks to its brilliant pacing, its perfectly unfolded reveals, and the sheer bloody elegance of its storytelling. If you'll pardon the cliché: I absolutely couldn't put it down.

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-De las diferencias y lo que provocan, figurativamente hablando (y al pie de la letra, también).-

Género. Ciencia-Ficción (en realidad no lo es, estrictamente hablando, pero la clasifico así por el bien del orden de distribución de libros en el blog. Cuento con su comprensión).

Lo que nos cuenta. En 1999, Stuart Gratton es un escritor especializado en la Segunda Guerra Mundial que acude a un evento de firma de ejemplares de sus obras cuando una mujer le entrega un manuscrito de su padre fallecido, el Sr. Sawyer, sobre sus experiencias durante el conflicto, un tema particularmente interesante ya que Gratton ha encontrado datos sobre un tal Sawyer que tuvo mucho que ver en el desenlace de la Segunda Guerra Mundial para Inglaterra, que firmó un armisticio con Alemania en 1941. En 1936 los gemelos Joe y Jack Sawyer van a Alemania a competir en los Juegos Olímpicos en la categoría de remo por parejas sin timonel, donde conocerán algo más del régimen tiránico, a alguno de sus líderes y a alguna de sus víctimas.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

[Darren Goossens · Rating 4 out of 5]

From http://darrengoossens.wordpress.com/2...

My wife’s review of this book is: “Engaging but unsatisfying. Not so good for people without a good knowledge of history.” I am rarely so pithy, direct, clear, definite or unequivocal, so shall proceed to spin out my review over hundreds of words. I may even reach a different conclusion.

Christopher Priest the author came to prominence through the British science fiction (SF) magazines, New Worlds and the like. Perhaps it’s because the British writers inherit the tradition of Wells, who predates ghettoised genre SF, that the UK writers see SF as a mode rather than a market. These authors and others write books which happen to be categorised in a particular way, but are not written to the category, so to speak. Priest has made a career of that, beginning relatively close to the (UK version of) the heart of genre SF, especially with his early classic, Inverted World, and then manifesting his preoccupations with what is real and what is not and whether we can tell the difference in more and more subtle and ambiguous ways, using fewer and fewer genre tropes, to the benefit of his work, which at its best (The Prestige, perhaps, The Affirmation, perhaps, The Islanders, probably) pays no heed to where the bookseller will shelve it, and whether it is slipstream (is that just the genre of things that don’t easily fit in any other genre? Who has worked out the Venn diagram for this?), SF or literary fiction or magic realism or anything else. Labels are not relevant. The author tackles something worth tackling, and the book takes the shape it needs to. This is admirable.

My big problem with this novel is that I am not sure what it is tackling, though that may well be my own lack of perceptiveness.

There are a few classes of alternate history stories, generally considered to date back to Murray Leinster‘s ‘Sidewise in Time’ of 1934, such that an award dedicated to the idea is called the Sidewise. Some explore an alternative history as if it were the only one, just an only one different to our only one. Stories like SS-GB or A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! fall into this category; there is a single event that turned out differently, and the ramifications are explored. Some use the multiple parallel universes as the main plot device, an infinity of parallel worlds exfoliating from every possible outcome of every (suitable) event, often invoking the ‘many worlds’ interpretation of quantum mechanics and some more pseudo-science to allow travel between the parallel worlds. A lovely, forgotten example of this is Ring Around the Sun by Simak, but other examples that come to mind include The Timeliner Trilogy (Richard C. Meredith) and Paratime by H. Beam Piper. A third category is something of an amalgam of the two — it explores the very point at which two (or possibly more) possible worlds diverged, with events often hinging on the most minor of causes. The archetype here is (I am tempted to say ‘of course’) ‘A Sound of Thunder’ by Ray Bradbury, though many of us will be more familiar with the Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror version, where Homer and his toaster create various universes.

The Separation falls into the last category. It explores the lives of twin brothers, J. L. (Joe) Sawyer, conscientious objector in World War Two, and J. L. (Jack) Sawyer, RAF Wellington bomber pilot. The historical turning point is the success (or as in our world, lack of success) of Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess’s attempt to broker peace with Britain in 1941, prior to the German invasion of Russia.

The structure of the book is somewhat obfuscated. The framing story uses an author of popular histories, clearly an inhabitant of the universe where Hess’s efforts succeeded, who wants to trace the story of J. L. Sawyer; he does not know if Sawyer is two people. Since the story includes doubles for some other key characters, this question of identity is a recurring one. The first Sawyer memoir we read appears to be our own world, from the point of view of Jack, who had met Hess at the Munich Olympics before WWII and got involved in the events around the peace mission. In the second half we get patchwork account of the lives of the two Sawyers in the alternate reality, with Joe as the focus. Joe survives the Blitz but suffers injuries. He may or may not take part in a conference that brokers peace in May 1941.

(I am going into the plot in more detail than I usually would because to some extent this review is me working out what the hell went on in the book. I won’t go on.)

The book has the strengths I have come to expect from its author. Priest has the bestselling author’s ability to make you turn the page, yet a dislike for the easy answer. From his early work he has shown the ability to describe the impossible in calm, reasonable tones that ground the story, even something as horrible as ‘The Head and the Hand’. His characters are not cyphers — this is an important strength in an alternative history novel, where the characters can be little more than bland cogs in the grinding gears of the universe (or at least in the logic chopping in the story).

But I’m not sure what the book is trying to do. Is it a fictionalised essay on a possible world? Is it an illustration of how history can turn on the smallest, most unpredictable of events? These are neither deep nor terribly subtle points. It is definitely a successful rendering of the lives of a pair of young men that got caught up in the war, and of how their different personalities lead them in different directions, so in that sense it works well as a literary novel of character. Like most of Priest’s major works, it is often unclear what is actually known, which is one of the points of it, I suppose. At times Churchill refers to a pacifist RAF bomber pilot, clearly conflating the two Sawyers. But they really are two people — they rowed the coxwainless pairs in Munich…

I think the book can be read as the story of parallel versions of two lives, and how the two worlds came to be. Then, at some point the story, or the bit of it included in the book, ends.

Perhaps it is unfair of me to ask what the book is about. If it had aimed lower — to simply tell an adventure story set in the parallel universe — I would not be asking this question. Because the book looks so closely at the men at the centre of the separation of the two worlds, it seems to be working to say something about the fragility of history, and how it is built on incomplete knowledge and misunderstandings and personalities as much as forces of history, and how easily our world could be different. Yet surely this is obvious. Or do most people wander along assuming that the world is how it must be, rather than how it happens to be?

The book is gripping. It kept me up late reading. It plays with time within the timelines, and ‘memories’ seem to go forwards as well as backwards. The prose is precise, and at times precisely misleading, the characters believable, the background almost too solid (‘gee, his research was thorough’ is not what the author wants going through your mind as you read, I suspect). It’s a good book, a fine book, and a lovely example of how Priest inhabits his own space, one he has created for himself, in the literary landscape. He is a major author of speculative fiction, science fiction, fiction that explores our fraught relationship with the ‘real’ world, whatever you want to call it (how about ‘fiction’?). Not recommended if you insist on endings that tie it all up with one stunning revelation. Otherwise, highly recommended.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

An alternative history story with a difference, one that focuses on the time of divergence (and the lead up to it) more than the after effects. Most alternative histories posit a critical decision in the past that if made differently would have caused a very different subsequent chain of events. Here the author explores what might have happened (and what might have made it happen) if Churchill had accepted Rudolph Hess's plan for peace in 1941.

The story focuses on two identical twins that become estranged and go on to live quite different lives into the second world war, one becoming a RAF bomber pilot, the other a conscientious objector working for the red cross. But they seem to become separated not only in space but in time-lines as well.

The author brings many of his trademark themes and ideas to this book; the question of identity and the unreliability of memory. He handles these with his usual restraint and subtlety, paying huge attention to detail in what seems to me a well researched book.

As with all alternative history stories, it helps if you have at least a general knowledge and interest in the time in question and this is definitely the case here with large parts of the narrative focusing on day to day life in WWII.

It seems to me that Priest was making the case that Britain should have made peace with Germany after the fall of France and that it was only Churchill's warmongering ways that prevented it. I'm not so sure but he does make quite a good case for it. Would Germany really have liberated Western Europe in exchange for peace with Britain?

But all in all, another very good read from one of my favourite authors who never fails to impress.

[Ziggy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quel roman WTF !!! J'ai a-do-ré ! Si c'est de la séparation de mes lobes du cerveau que l'auteur évoque en titre, sachez qu'il a totalement réussi sa mission ! J'ai adoré me faire bousculer par ce roman entre uchronie et faits réels, entre Histoire et histoires et la technique narrative utilisée pour nous mettre dans l'état de pensée d'un des personnages est juste géniale. Une pépite !

[Phil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. This is exactly what is wanted and expected from a Christopher Priest novel: crises of identity, the unreliability of memory, imposters, delusions, a critique of the construction of history - both public and private - and a compelling narrative that keeps the reader on his or her toes right to the end and then beyond.

It's his best novel since "The Affirmation", and possibly therefore his best, full stop.

Without giving anything away, then, a pair of identical twins take very different paths in life, which involve them in two very different versions of history. Their experiences sometimes overlap, sometimes flatly contradict each other. They are embroiled, almost accidentally, with world-changing events and people, who themselves may not be what they seem. Both their lives and deaths are multifaceted, in incident and significance. Both are attested to by witnesses of diametrically different happenings and outcomes. They may even be the same person, experiencing contrary and parallel existences, or hallucinations.

As always, Priest's prose is surefooted, colourful, and casually allusive. The narrative strands are laid out like a hall of mirrors, becoming ever more fragmentary and difficult to follow in any kind of unified way, while continuing to command attention and stimulate the desire to make clear sense. It implicates the reader in its own logic, and keeps raising questions which may never be answered.

[Wastrel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of the three Priest novels I've read, this is definitely the least powerful, least shocking, least mind-bending, and most certainly the least neat and tidy, relying less on a beautifully elegant twist that ties a neat bow on everything and more on a meditative exploration of paths not taken that is always in motion but that never really goes anywhere.

It is also, however, magnetic in its storytelling despite its arguable lack of story, convincingly solid and engrossing in its historical specificity, and a magisterial display of the author's uncanny command of voice and character.

It may not have shaken me to my core, or lead to any profound epiphanies, but it was thoroughly enjoyable to read and strengthens my conviction that Priest is one of the most talented writers I've encountered, despite his lack of ostentation.

This is also probably, despite its somewhat frustrating ending, a novel with a broader appeal than the more mind-bending and obscure The Affirmation and The Prestige, thanks to its apparent straightforwardness (sort of!) and well-researched placement in a 'popular' historical era (WWII).

For my full review, you can look over on my blog

[Guy Salvidge · Rating 5 out of 5]

This might be Priest's best novel, an alternate-WWII story featuring twin brothers, a Bronze medal at the Berlin Olympics, a 1941 armistice between Britain and Germany, and a whole lot of phastamagoric shenanigans. Oh, and Rudolph Hess is a fairly major character in it. The book is convoluted, labyrinthine, and fascinating. I'm sure it would reward careful re-reading. Priest isn't and has never been much of a stylist, but no matter - this is highly accomplished and highly creative work.

[Matthew Fitzgerald · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps there was all sorts of meaning behind the duality of the various characters – the brothers Sawyer, discovering doppelgangers of Churchill and Hess, etc – but I put down this book pretty disappointed. Priest constructs a somewhat bland frame story for this novel, and then uses all manner of historical documents to flesh it out: journals (funny how all the characters write so well and descriptively in their journals, almost like … a novel), telegraphs, excerpts from newspapers and speeches, letters, military transcripts … a lot of it done to set up some kind of internal consistency, a historicity of this world where WW2 ended differently. I followed the book through several turns, keeping the storylines of the two JD Sawyers distinct in my head, even though the author was intentionally muddying the waters. Some effort was put into characterizing Hess as a powerful, menacing villain, but for all we hear of it, it’s all talk, with little more a few strong-armed conversations. Also some care was taken to flesh out an alternate history for the war. There even seems to be two competing narratives at one point, one that lives in this alternate timeline and another that lives in "our" timeline. Again, the lines are deliberately blurred, but it doesn't matter, because in the end he does nothing with them.

At least the twin brothers were characterized strongly, if not particularly well done. JD felt like the lead in a Heinlein novel about the RAF, while Joe was a morose man who seems full of courage and moral vigor at his conscientious objector hearing, but he’s slowly gnawed by doubt into a rather pathetic character. Birdgit is as flat and one dimensional a female character I have seen. There was never anything there for me to care about, for JD to long for or for Joe to love. But Priest does do a good job of conveying the daily terror, scarcity, fatigue, and difficulties of wartime. Especially seeing London after a night of bomb, from both JD’s perspective and Joe’s, was captivating. Here a strong and accurate sense of geography and history help pain the picture, and it's vivid and often the best parts of the novel.

I didn’t come away from the book with any clear idea of what was the “true” narrative. Did both men die in their respective methods of wartime service, and they’re both getting one of those “how life might’ve been” moments before death, a la Jacob’s Ladder? Is the incongruity of the stories a comment on the chaos of war? If Joe never really did help Britain achieve a separate peace, then what future was the frame story set in, where the US is some hyper-isolationist police state? And if Joe’s waking dreams are ultimately false, then why are there so many red herrings that pointlessly try to legitimize it all as a real part of this alternate history? The inability of Priest to not only wrap up the novel with a compelling ending, but to also fail to offer any kind of edification as to what really happened (in a book with no great meditations on the human condition, with little more going for it than the thrust of the story), it all just made me feel like I had wasted my time.

[Eleanor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great many years ago, I read a book of essays called “If it had Happened Otherwise”, which took various historical events and then examined what the outcomes might have been if a key factor had changed. I have loved this sort of writing ever since. Christopher Priest takes as his historical event the flight of Rudolf Hess to Scotland to try to bring about a peace treaty between Germany and Great Britain.

His way into this is through the lives of identical twins Jack and Joe Sawyer. But this is not a straightforward different history - there are many versions of the lives of these two young men. We are in the realm of quantum mechanics and parallel universes.

The book is brilliant, intriguing and utterly absorbing. I loved it. One of the best books of the year for me.

[Sara G · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book about differing timelines and a potential alternate history WWII seemed interesting, but ended up being boring and incomprehensible to me. It's won a lot of awards, but just a quick glance at Goodreads reviews shows that people's opinions are pretty polarized. Obviously the author did his research about the historical aspects, but the way he used twins and hallucinations to characterize events and possible permutations of them just became too hard to follow.

[Brian Koser · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wut

[Jenny Sparrow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Третья книга Приста в моем зачете.

Главные герои: близнецы, которые делят не только внешность, но и инициалы. В юности они участвуют в Олипийских играх в нацистском Берлине в 1936 году, но после этого их пути расходятся. Один становится летчиком Королевской авиации, а другой - пацифистом и женится на немке. А потом начинается Вторая мировая..

Стиль Приста чувствуется: снова здесь повествование, которое ведется от лица разных героев, снова несколько временных пластов сменяют друг друга, снова дневники и письма, снова иллюзии, сны, галлюцинации, близнецы, проблема идентификации.. Только на этот раз еще альтернативная история и Вторая мировая война. Что могло бы быть, если бы в мае 41 года был подписан тот сепаратный мирный договор между Британией и Германией, который пытался заключить заместитель фюрера Рудольф Хесс, прилетевший для этого в Шотландию?

Причем с точки зрения повествования он как раз был подписан, и привел к тому, что Британия вышла из войны в 1941 году, и это до неузнаваемости изменило мир. В самом начале (в наше время) мы как бы вскользь узнаем, что США давно в глубоком экономическом и политическом кризисе, что у них с Европой очень натянутые отношения и тому подобные вещи. Это сразу интригует и побуждает читать дальше, чтобы узнать, в чем же соль.

Только вот чем дальше, тем лично мне читать становилось все утомительнее, потому что Прист дает очень мало ответов, лишь только с каждой главой закручивает и закручивает спираль времени, сюжета, событий. Накладывет одно на другое, и читатель уже сам, как один из главных героев, перестает понимать, то ли это явь, то ли сон.. Я и сейчас не все кусочки паззла сложила, не со всеми вещами разобралась. Но в целом я поняла, что личности братьев-героев и их судьбы (один военный летчик, другой - пацифист и сотрудник Красного креста) и являются выражением двух временных реальностей. Мира, где война не закончилась в 1941 году и продолжилась по тому сценарию, какой знаком нам; и мира, где в мае 1941 года был подписан мирный договор, что изменило всю Европу до неузнаваемости..

В общем, оценка довольно скромная, потому что временами хотелось бросить и после прочтения осталось много вопросов. Но с другой стороны книга заставляет мозг поработать, возвращает к себе мыслями и после прочтения, в ней очень интересная манера изложения и интересная альтернативная история. Но не Престиж, от которого я в свое время была в восторге.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just finished The Separation by Christopher Priest. 3/5.

This was an interesting read, but not one that completely worked for me.

Priest builds a fascinating alternate-history premise around the Second World War, memory, identity, and the idea that history itself may not be as fixed as we like to believe. There are moments where the novel is genuinely thought-provoking, and I found myself constantly questioning what was real, what was remembered, and what might have happened in another timeline.

At the same time, I never really connected with the protagonists. They felt more like vehicles for the ideas than people I became emotionally invested in. That made it difficult to care as much about the outcome as I wanted to.

The deliberately fragmented narrative also adds to the challenge. I appreciate what Priest was trying to achieve, but there were times when the ambiguity became more confusing than intriguing. By the end, I admired the construction more than I enjoyed the journey.

It’s certainly a novel that rewards careful reading and probably improves on a second pass. For me, though, it remained intellectually interesting rather than emotionally compelling.

3/5.

[Nicky · Rating 1 out of 5]

I gave this a good long chance, but around a hundred pages in I was still completely underwhelmed. I've heard good things about Christopher Priest, so maybe this just isn't the right book for me. On the other hand, maybe he just isn't the right writer for me.

I skimmed a bunch of other reviews, and then the end of the book, and just -- really, it doesn't sound like it does anything particularly interesting. Alternate histories can be fascinating, but it doesn't sound like Christopher Priest ever commits to one idea and runs with it. The cop-out end with the implication that it was all or mostly a hallucination just, ugh.

[Terry Pearce · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is exactly what I've come to expect from Christopher Priest. Engaging, thoughtful, slightly mind-bending takes on reality with good writing and character behind the conceit. Worthwhile.

[Rachel (Kalanadi)]

DNF'd at 34%. Just really not for me and I was bored, with no sense of where the story was headed.

[Eleanor]

As in the only other book I’ve read by him, The Prestige, Priest is fascinated here by twins and doubling, shadow selves, and the road not taken. Set on the eve of, and during, WWII, with a ’90s-set frame story to which we annoyingly never return, The Separation is about twins, Jacob and Joseph Sawyer (both of whose initials are J.L., which causes other characters, and indeed the government, to confuse the two). Competing in the 1936 Berlin Olympics as a cox-less rowing pair, they see Hitler, Hess, and the trappings of Nazism. Jack, with frustrating naivete, is basically unaffected by the visit, but Joe understands that their hosts—and particularly the daughter, Birgit—are in trouble as German Jews, and arranges for Birgit to be smuggled out to England in the van that carries their rowing shells and equipment. From their different responses to Berlin, a more profound separation follows: Joe marries Birgit and becomes a conscientious objector driving ambulances for the Red Cross, while Jack becomes a fighter pilot. The novel starts off slow and very normal-historical. But soon, cracks start to show. Jack witnesses a German plane shot down by other Germans. Moments later, he sees the same thing happen again, but differently. Jack’s plane crashes and he survives along with the navigator, but then we hear from the navigator, who says Jack died. Joe is killed during the Blitz and Jack lives decades without him, but then Joe re-narrates the episode, in which he’s missing for a few days but eventually located, meeting Jack several times afterwards.

Joe experiences what he calls “lucid imaginings”: long intervals during which the circumstances of his life change minutely. He is aware that contact with his twin seems to spark these visions, but what are they? Quantum realities? Hallucinations brought on by fatigue and injury? Doublings and the truth of history are crucial sub-plots: Churchill and Rudolph Hess both appear to have body doubles (Churchill’s does his bomb-site morale tours for him; Hess’s seems to be the one who goes through Nuremberg and imprisonment after the war, so where has the actual Hess gone?) In one of these realities, Joe is deeply involved with the conception and delivery of a peace treaty in 1941, while the USA, Soviets, and Japan never enter the fighting. In the other—the frame story’s, so presumably our reality—the war proceeded as we know it and didn’t end until 1945. There is so much thematically going on in this novel, but regarding pace and writing I had doubts. The writing isn’t bad so much as dull: neither Joe nor Jack are engaging narrators, and while their factual approach may have been designed to make them more reliable in a reader’s mind, it makes the prose unexciting on the sentence level. Pacing is oddly slow, too; this isn’t a timey-wimey statecraft thriller, although it could have been and sometimes looks like it should be, but nor is it a deep, character-driven dive into the emotional fracture occasioned by war. Nothing is ever explained for the reader—not the nature of Joe’s “lucid dreams”, not the specifics of each altered reality—and you don’t have to explain as a writer, but then it would be nice to get more aesthetic pleasure from the prose. It’s brilliant as a thought exercise, but a slightly frustrating experience as a novel.

[Andres · Rating 3 out of 5]

Novela ganadora del BSFA y el Arthur C Clarke 2003.
Me costó leerla. Priest es un genio dando vueltas, y acá no es menor.
¿Universos paralelos? ¿Historia alternativa? ¿Líneas temporales coexistentes?
No sé, no queda claro y la verdad creo tampoco importa.
La Segunda Guerra Mundial con dos realidades que no se cruzan, pero sí se cruzan. ¿Cuál es la verdadera, si es que existe una?
La escritura de Priest es genial en su confusión. No te deja asumir nada porque a medio camino de una idea te hace creer que quizás estabas equivocado.
Un libro algo más espeso de lo que me esperaba. He leído genialidades de Priest, y esto solo puedo decir que me dejó contento. Las obras de historia “alternativa” siempre me han costado un poco. Acá no se si era una, la verdad, pero se termina de leer.
¿O era una sola, y los recuerdos son los confusos?

[Warwick Stubbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

The ending frustrated the hell out of me, but I cannot deny the power of the storytelling.

Flawless and engrossing tale of two identical twin brothers with the same initials during an alternate version of World War 2. Constantly had me questioning events, while also questioning my own memory of what I had previously read. The first story focuses on Jack, and his tale is the most intense, and the narrative that I was glued to for a straight two hours of reading or so, while Joe's which takes up the final narrative is broken and fragmented, but still engaging as I struggled with my own sense of knowledge.

One of Priest's skills is that he forces the reader to question what they think they know, but doesn't, at least in this novel, lay out definitive answers. This is the frustration about the ending, and I would have still preferred to have the present day researcher tie-up his own feelings at the end of the book, since that is who the book begins with, but instead, we are left with the final thoughts of Joe. But that in itself also gave me time, and the opportunity, to attempt to solve this literary jigsaw puzzle myself.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This time-slip, alternate-world, twin-dynamic novel from Priest is an excellent work, full of satisfyingly unexplained detail which makes for an engaging, intriguing read. On a personal level, however. the downside is that I have little interest in World War II, so some of the historical information, the detail around planes and weaponry, and the political machinations were a struggle for me to become involved in. For this reason, it drops a star, but mileage for others will vary. Ultimately, it's a brilliantly realised slipstream novel which I generally enjoyed spending time with.

[Ren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Familiar Priest themes of twinship intertwined with counterfactual history, narrated unreliably. Mysterious and incredibly compelling -- maybe especially so if you don't know quite enough about British WWII history to tell real from alternate history, like me.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Separation opens with a frame narrative centred on Stuart Gratton, a popular writer of WWII non-fiction in 1999 who encounters a woman called Angela Chipperton at one of his book signings. Mrs. Chipperton says that her father made notes about his experiences during the war - notes which may be of use to Gratton in the research of his next book. Chipperton’s father, Sawyer, was a flight lieutenant and she offers him her notes. Gratton doesn’t recall coming across the name in any of his prior research but agrees to look into it. He writes a letter to an acquaintance called Sam Levy, living in Madagascar, who served with Sawyer in the RAF. The reference to Madagascar is one indication that in Gratton’s reality, the Second World War did not unfold the way it did in ours. Through letters from Gratton to Levy, we learn that those of Jewish ancestry were sent to Madagascar (a real-life plan that was considered by the Nazis for a brief time) with the view of forming an independent republic. Additionally, an armistice with Germany is mentioned as having been signed in 1941, rather than its surrender in 1945.

We then get the account of Jacob “Jack” Sawyer, who is recounting his experiences at some point after the war has finished in 1945, instantly putting it in contention with Gratton’s reality. Sawyer reflects on his life from 1941, specifically 10th May 1941, a critically important date which serves as the Jonbar point on which the novel’s events hinge. This is the date in our history that Rudolf Hess was captured by the British in an attempt to fly to Scotland and propose peace negotiations with Britain, and that in the novel Jack Sawyer goes on a bombing raid over Hamburg. The detail Priest gives here reminded me of Len Deighton’s novel Bomber; the research attention to detail is evident. Aircraft play a prominent role in the novel generally, befitting the New Wave’s fascination with them as an example of technology that has fundamentally changed human psychology and how we perceive the world. We can fly halfway around the world in mere hours and, as Jack reflects on numerous times, engender a cognitive as well as physical distance – a separation - between he and the targets he is bombing. He sees the flashes of the explosions beneath the clouds, but not the stricken victims.

Interspersed with his recollections are Sawyer’s memories of 1936 onwards. He and his identical twin brother Joe compete in the rowing at that year’s Berlin Olympics, after which Jack meets Rudolf Hess. Hess is consistently portrayed across both the twins’ accounts as a strange, eccentric and thoroughly unpleasant and uncouth man, and one remark of his in particular struck me as containing potentially homoerotic subtext:

You will enjoy the rest of the evening. There will be no women, no one to interrupt what we wish to do. You understand, of course! We all have a good enjoyment, and you can show me how you stroke.

This is not the clunky English of a non-native speaker, mind; both Sawyer and Hess are speaking German with each other in this interaction.

In Berlin they are hosted by a German couple called the Sattmanns – friends of the Sawyer twins’ parents - who have a young daughter called Birgit. Jack becomes smitten with her and this lays the foundation of the two twins’ estrangement. Jack learns that competing in the Olympic games was ultimately a ruse in order for Joe to rescue Birgit from Germany, as she is Jewish. Following their escape from Germany, Jack and Joe become increasingly distant towards each other, worsened by the fact that Joe marries Birgit in secrecy upon returning to England. Jack’s family appearing to have gone behind his back to plan Birgit’s extrication from Germany breeds additional resentment in him. The resulting isolation Jack feels serves as a major impetus for his joining the RAF. This crucially marks a point of divergence in the two brothers’ lives, as Joe registers to be a conscientious objector.

Returning to 1941, Jack is discharged from the hospital and reports to Winston Churchill himself for a special operation. Churchill expresses particular interest in Jack’s meeting of Rudolf Hess in Berlin. The British government assign him to write up a report on the mental and physical presentation of Rudolf Hess, who is being held prisoner by the British. During the course of assignment, Jack begins to notice various anomalies such as Churchill being unaware of or not remembering a previous conversation they’d both had or being strangely quiet where before he had been jovial and talkative. This leads Jack to conclude that the ‘Churchill’ he has been reporting to may be a double of the real man. Additionally, during his observations of Hess, Jack notices discrepancies in the Nazi’s behaviour and presentation, such as him having a thick Bavarian accent despite none of the foreign office papers mentioning this fact. Another discrepancy is Hess eating the meat in his meals, despite the ‘real’ Hess being a known vegetarian. Furthermore, Jack starts receiving letters from an increasingly distraught Birgit who is worrying about Joe, who is away from home on his duties with the Red Cross. Jack makes visits back home to see Birgit and, at her request, starts dressing up like Joe to ease her pain of missing him. From this begins an affair, with Jack assuming another’s identity just like he suspected of happening with Churchill and Hess.

Jack and Birgit receive news of Joe’s death during the Blitz, in which the Red Cross ambulance he was in was hit by a bomb. This brings Jack and Birgit’s affair to an end as they are both overcome with guilt for going behind Joe’s back, mirroring how Joe had gone behind Jack’s back when arranging to smuggle Birgit out of Germany. Nevertheless, Jack submits his report on Hess to Churchill and goes back on bomber command and bombs numerous German cities. Doubts pass through his mind about the strategic value of these raids, recalling the determination of the British during the London Blitz and whether they might strengthen Germany’s resolve in the same way.

During a raid, Jack’s plane is hit by anti-aircraft fire and lands on German soil, where he remains in a German PoW camp until it is liberated by the US army at the end of the war in 1945. During his internment, Jack gets a letter from Birgit telling him that she has remarried and is happy with a new life, the final confirmation that she is out of Jack’s life forever. He visits their old home – now just Birgit’s – one last time and sees who he assumes is his daughter playing in the garden. A man he doesn’t recognise sees him from the house, before a voice from inside shouts the girl’s name: Angela. The same girl who would go on to give Stuart Gratton the notes, perhaps? Soon thereafter Jack learns of his father’s death to prostate cancer, and his mother passes away shortly after from angina. He returns to England, but with nothing there for him anymore, he takes a ship to Australia where he lives out the rest of his working life. Thus closes Jack’s account of events.

The novel returns to Stuart Gratton running errands around Cheshire, roughly overlapping the part of the country which the Sawyers and Birgit lived. The areas around Manchester and the Cheshire Plain are of recurring importance in the novel, and Christopher Priest himself was born near the boundary of what is now Greater Manchester. Mrs. Chipperton has seemingly vanished from existence as Gratton finds her given address to be a laundromat and that she has neither a phone number nor an email address. Gratton also checks all of the local records for anyone named Sawyer or Chipperton and finds none, throwing all of what we’d learnt in Jack’s account into question. Alternatively, it could be interpreted as a sign that history is being rewritten, and that Mrs Chipperton has been erased from reality due to a different choice or action taken in the past. Gratton does however receive a response from Sam Levy, the crew member who flew with Sawyer during the war. We get a statement from Levy that recounts how he met Sawyer and his impressions of the man. Similarly to how Jack mirrors Joe when he wears his clothes, Levy’s report on his impressions of Jack mirror Jack’s report on his impressions of Hess, providing us with another example of duality.

Levy remarks on odd occurrences involving Sawyer that suggest he is actually seeing Jack when he thought he was seeing Joe. He would talk with Jack in the mess whilst he was in uniform, only to encounter ‘Jack’ later in the nearby town wearing his civilian clothes and a blank, unrecognising expression. ‘Jack’ would also be glimpsed in the woods near the base, again with an unrecognising expression on his face. Levy’s recounts the bombing raid over Hamburg on 10th May 1941. In Levy’s account, first mention of what appear to be German planes firing upon each other is made. When his bomber is shot down, Levy survives the collision with the water and escapes the freezing water of the North Sea in a dinghy, after which An RAF plane flies overhead with help arriving shortly after. This was the last time Levy saw or heard from Sawyer and, like so much of Priest’s dialogue, Sawyer’s last words to Levy invite multiple interpretations:

I think at least one of us will be OK.

Is Sawyer referring to he and Levy, or he and his brother?

Taking an epistolary form, the novel presents an extract from a fictional book-within-a-book about the Red Cross. The author of the book witnesses Joe Sawyer making his case before a tribunal as to his reasons why he wishes to not serve in the armed forces. This is followed by notebooks written by Joe, as well as downloaded internet archives. As Joe is a pacifist, his hostility towards Churchill noticeably colours his accounts and the truth of these notes rendered not altogether reliable. During one of his visits home, Joe is beaten up by a group of men for being a ‘coward’ due to not serving in the armed forces. Paired with Birgit’s frantic letters in which she mentions her neighbours’ suspicions that she is a fifth column, this incident further paints how war can breed estrangement, distrust and social dislocation. Joe’s assault occurs on the same day Winston Churchill replaces Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister, another crucial point in time where events appear to display an odd synchronicity, akin to Jack Sawyer’s bomber being shot down on the same day as Rudolf Hess’s flight to Britain. What is particularly interesting about the former example is that after Joe is beaten up, Churchill becomes noticeably more intransigent and an increasingly strident warmonger, underscoring Joe’s argument during the tribunal:

Violence, when opposed by other violence, creates a set of circumstances in which more violence will inevitably follow.

The proceeding chapters are marked by Joe’s periodic visits back home, on one of which he finds an RAF cap in a wardrobe and, upon putting it on, feels a frisson and his face appears to ‘change to fit the cap’. This represents an interesting mirror to how Jack essentially assumed Joe’s identity when wearing Joe’s clothes during his visits to Birgit. Embedded within this section is a curious extract from another book-within-a-book about the war, which describes the US making the pre-emptive strike on Japan instead and occupies Manchuria. Britain signs an armistice with Germany early, and both Germany and the US invade the USSR from either side, dismantling it.

Joe recounts his surviving the blast that hit his ambulance, signalling the beginning of reoccurring “lucid dreams” presumably brought on by the concussion he suffered. Joe returns home to find that Birgit is pregnant and will soon be expecting their child. Joe suffers multiple of his ‘lucid dreams’ in which he sees his brother Jack in his home. This compels Joe to confront a distraught Birgit over why Jack’s RAF uniform is in their wardrobe, to which Birgit simply says that Jack asked her to look after it for him. The pair’s relationship continues to fray while Joe sent a classified mission for the Red Cross. Joe sees Jack piloting the plane, only for him to vanish once more. The meeting is revealed to be a peace talk in Lisbon; conditions are laid out by the Germans which include Edward VIII re-assuming the throne – something actually desired by the Nazis at one point in our history.

A potential peace deal is agreed but as neither Churchill or Hitler gave permission for the meeting, it is dead paper and the bombing raids continue. Joe returns home to see Birgit, who he has been receiving help from a Mrs. Gratton and her son Harry. Harry drops some not-so subtle remarks that instantly raise suspicion in the reader about a possible affair between the two while Joe has been away, and that he will be there for her should anything happen to Joe. Joe and Birgit thus become increasingly distant from each other and their relationship ever more troubled, reinforcing what I took to be one of the novel’s most important and central themes: the toll war has on people and their connections and relationships with each other. In Jack’s account of his time in the PoW camp in Germany, he remarks on the prisoners’ relationships at home falling apart due to the isolation – the separation - and the difficulty of sending and receiving letters which serves to instil worry and suspicion about their wives’ faithfulness.

A brief but what I found an interesting section was journal entries from Goebbels. In a novel constructed upon unreliable narration, the Nazi propaganda minister is perhaps the ultimate thematic embodiment of that idea; propaganda is our unreliable narration. His entries are fittingly bellicose and exaggerative, painting British bombing raids on Germany as causing negligible damage whilst German raids on Britain are wiping out cities to an extent that was not seen at any point during the WWII we know. Crucially, he closes his journal with a reference to a plot to eliminate Rudolf Hess and passes orders onto Goering to oversee that it be carried out.

Joe’s lucid dreams continue, and his fracturing mental state is conveyed in the text through the formatting of his narrative, which is markedly more fragmentary than Jack’s and his own pre-Blitz memories. He passes a group of RAF crewmen in the nearby town, two of whom look at him strangely – the very same incident recounted by Sam in his report. Joe wanders around the perimeter fencing of the base, staring at awe at the ascending planes in awe like young Jim in Ballard’s Empire of the Sun before passing through the woods that are nearby, the woods in which Levy recalled Jack being glimpsed by the airmen. Joe has two lucid dreams in which he speaks to his brother which feel like a thematic culmination of the novel. In the first dream, Joe futilely tries to convince Jack that the war is due to end and that he has helped settle an armistice and that Jack should retire from the RAF, fearing for his safety. This is poorly received by Jack, who neither believes an armistice is possible nor does he want to leave the RAF due to his love of flying. In the second dream, Joe confronts Jack about what has been going on between he and Birgit while he’s been away. Jack becomes increasingly angry at the insinuation, and Joe again awakes from the dream, returning to full consciousness in his hotel room. Both brothers’ ideologies and views on the war have driven them to positions which cannot be reconciled, and their jealousy and suspicion of each other further underscore how war pulls people apart, both familial relations as well as romantic relations.

Another Gratton book details the plan by the Luftwaffe to shoot down a Messerschmitt that had been captured and repaired by the RAF and sent north in its German colours and livery. The Luftwaffe conceive an operation at the behest of Goering - but ultimately from Goebbels as we learnt from his journals - to shoot down the plane and therefore prevent Hess making his way to Britain for peace talks. Eyewitness accounts report two conflicting versions: one in which Hess’s plane escapes and he makes it to a peace negotiation in Stockholm (Joe’s timeline) and one in which Hess is shot down and captured by the British (Jack’s timeline).

Joe’s account concludes with him witnessing the signing of the German-British armistice, though Churchill has little faith that the Nazis will honour the agreement and warns Hess should the Nazis violate it. After the meeting, Joe is informed that his brother Jack is in hospital after his plane was shot down after following the bombing raid on Germany. Peace seemingly achieved, Joe returns home, only to find the lock on his house’s front door replaced. Harry Gratton answers his knock on the door and finds Birgit has given birth to a son, whereas notably in Jack’s account Birgit gave birth to a girl. She and Harry named the baby Stuart. Joe suffers a last lucid dream in which he sees Jack and falls back and hits his head. He returns to his past when the war was still raging.
Joe’s flashbacks in which he returns to the moment of his accident appear remarkably similar to the effect PTSD has on the victims of war; trauma that prevents people from ever truly moving on. No matter what Joe does in his life following the blast that struck the ambulance, he inevitably goes back to that moment, unable to stay in the present.

The Separation manages to be both cerebral in typical Priestian fashion but also has very human themes and emotion at its heart. A beautiful novel.

[Jens · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I found a copy of a Christopher Priest novel, I immediately said "yes": The Glamour had knocked me off my feet with its incredible twist right at the end, so I expected a similary payoff from "The Separation".

In this alternate history military fiction speculative novel (what a mouthful), we follow the lives of identical twins from rural England before and during the Second World War, and as expected something is definitely up. They choose very different paths for their lives, they are interested in the same woman, one of them marries her, and these characters' paths are definitely intertwined. Very intertwined indeed.

The more we learn about each of the twins' lives, the more questions arise. What is real? Who is lying, or telling a story they only believe to be true? What is the connection of the framework narrative to the twins? Do we really know anything for certain?

Now that is all very engaging, and I was SO curious to find out about the big twist in the end! And then it came... and it wasn't very big at all. Sort of a let-down, actually, comparatively. I had fought through hundreds of pages of intensely military plot with lots of descriptions of airplanes and bombs and their effects, a VERY detailed alternate history of Britain WW2 history with lots of meetings and international policy, and convoluted diary entries from several characters, just to be served a cookie-cutter plot twist.

This is the right book for you if you have different expectations, and especially if you are interested in WW2 aviation, military fiction on life in the barracks, and Winston Churchill. It is a page-turner, just be aware of what is actually written on these pages.

[Peter Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Separation by Christopher Priest


I had been meaning to read Christopher Priest’s “The Inverted World” (published in 1974) for four decades. I don’t know why I kept putting it off, but I finally read it in 2023. The story has one of the best opening line in science fiction – “I HAD REACHED the age of six hundred and fifty miles” – which just hooks the reader into finding out how this can be possible.

The setting of “The Inverted World” is the real attraction. Priest describes a city slowly winching its way through Europe. For some unexplained reason, the world has become topologically distorted. The world behind the city falls off as time slows down – people can spend months behind the city, but when they return only a day has passed. On the other hand, time speeds up ahead of the city – pioneers who go ahead for a day return to find that months have passed in the city.

The reason for this is not explained until – maybe – the end. The story deals with the problems of bridging rivers and gorges and climbing mountains as we discover the strange world that the protagonist – Helward Mann – lives in.

It is fascinating and somewhat claustrophobic story. The reader is constantly trying to make sense of the strange time/topographical features of the world, which serves as a useful distraction to problems with the plot or characters and compels the reader to the conclusion to find out “what the heck is going on????”

Alas, I found the conclusion to be muddled. I wasn’t sure if the city residents description of their reality was true or was supposed to be a subjective hallucination caused by the power system used by the city.

Priest’s writing technique in “The Inverted World” is mildly unconventional. He would alternate between chapters told in the first person by Helward Mann and chapters told in the third person by some other person, which added to the sense of confusion.

Thus, in The Inverted World we have themes of an unreliable narrator and utter confusion about what is going on, really.

The Separation (2002) is my second Christopher Priest book.

It is very well-written, but the themes of unreliable narrator and ultimate confusion about what is going on have become more acute. The writing is good. The presentation is compelling, However, if you are trying to keep the details straight, you will go bonkers.

Which seems to be the point.

The Separation appears to be an alternate-history (Alt-hist) science fiction book. At least that was how I was diagnosing it, until I thought it was maybe a mystery, but ultimately I concluded it was a very strange alt-hist novel.

The story starts with a historian named Stuart Gratton finishing a book tour on one of his books of oral history on Operation Barbarossa during World War II. Gratton’s specialty is obtaining oral histories – the lived stories of people who fought during World War II. Almost immediately, Priest starts dropping hints to the experienced science fiction reader that we are dealing with a time-line that is not exactly our own. Priest via Gratton mention the “Sino-American War in the mid-1940s.” Well, that didn’t happen, unless he is referring to American troops that were in China during Mao’s conquest of China. My dad mentioned drinking Tsingtao beer in Tsingtao as he heard Communist shelling in the mountains when he was in the Navy in approximately 1949. So, maybe something like that was a jump-off for this alt-hist.

Otherwise, it seems that Gratton’s history was much like ours. It seems that America did become involved in the European War and Germany was defeated. On the other hand, there is a reference to the Republic of Masada, which seems to be a Jewish State on the island of Madagascar. The deportation of European Jews to Madagascar was an idea floated by the National Socialists as a solution for the “Jewish Problem.”

Gratton is toying with the idea of hunting down a strange reference in Winston Churchill’s notes about a “J.L. Sawyer” who was both a conscientious objector and a RAF bomber pilot. That is a strange combination and Gratton thinks there may be a short book in the subject.

He is presented with the memoirs that might be from man’s daughter – Miss Angela Chipperton – in which we learn that there were two J.L. Sawyers. They were twins and rowed for England during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. One of them (“Jack” or “J.L.”) met Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess. The other (“Joe”) smuggled a Jewish girl out of Germany (Birgitte), whom he subsequently married. Jack became a bomber pilot; Joe became a conscientious objector.

We learn that Joe was killed in London during the Blitz. Jack was shot down and then assigned to work for Churchill for a short time, returned to the air war, was shot down again, spent two years in a German POW camp, learned that Birgitte had remarried, and then learns that he had a daughter – Angela – with Birgitte from an affair he had with her. Joe goes to Australia and seems never to have met Angela, except Angela gave Gratton the notes we are supposedly reading.

Thus starts the confusion.

The theme of twin confusion is repeated through the book. Hess chortles to Jack about the crazy pranks he and his brother must have played as identical twins. Later we learn that Churchill used a double to visit the bombed out British. Later still, Jack is assigned to meet Deputy Fuhrer Hess in a British POW camp after Hess’s crazy flight to England on May 10, 1941 in an effort to broker peace between Germany and England. Jack determines that the man the British are holding is an imposter, which is a bit of this-timeline speculation. (Although “Hess” never denied being Hess during 40 years of imprisonment…as far as the public knows.)

The story keeps looping around to May 10, 1941. That was the day that Gratton selects as his jump off point because he was born on that day. It was the day of Hess’s flight to Germany while being chased by the Luftwaffe. Jack sees the chase on a bombing run to Hamburg.

Then, the story starts to change in subtle, confusing, and jarring ways. We learn from Jack’s Jewish navigator writing to Gratton from the Republic of Masada that he was the only survivor from the flight that Jack’s memoirs claimed he survived and rescued the navigator. The two of them were rescued in the North Sea according to Jack’s memoirs, but according to the navigator’s letter to Gratton, only he was rescued.

We also learn that Jack claimed to have been married to Birgitte. Was this true or was Jack lying to his crew to cover up the affair.

Jack confirms to Churchill in 1941 that Joe was killed in the Blitz in 1940, but Birgitte gets a letter in 1940 telling her that Joe was discovered alive in a men’s home with a concussion. Joe survives, joins the Red Cross, and then meet with Deputy Fuhrer Hess in 1941 in Portugal.

At this point, the reader starts wondering if he has misread the earlier chapters.

Joe and Birgitte’s marriage is on the rocks, but Birgitte and he have a child – maybe Jack’s child – who is a boy, not Angela. Angela disappears from the story as does Stuart Gratton. By the end of the story, Joe has helped to broker peace between Germany and England in 1941, which leads to a stronger post-war England, America invades Russia through China, and Germany withdraws from Western Europe.

We are now truly in an Alt-hist story.

All of this is told through memoirs, news clippings, and journal entries.

It is all fascinating. The change from one history to a completely different history is subtle. The reader initially is left thinking that they just misremembered things or perhaps the narrator lied. Maybe Joe lied to Churchill about the death of his brother in 1940? Maybe Joe did die in that time line. In the final timeline, it does not seem that Churchill ever met Jack, although he did meet Joe.

So, by the end of the novel, we have a really interesting, well-done experience – well-written, captivating, engaging – that leaves us wondering “what is going on here????”

Just like The Inverted World.

Along with May 10, 1941, the latter part of the story – the Joe Timeline – loops around Joe waking up in an ambulance from his concussion. We are repeatedly treated to long scenes where Joe moves forward into the future only to wake up again in the ambulance. There is a brief interlude where the report of a Red Cross psychologist describes Joe’s concern that he may be hallucinating his current existence. It may be the case that the entire Joe Timeline is simply the report of a very unreliable narrator waking up from a concussion.

Again, an ambiguous ending like The Inverted World.

Ultimately, this is a work of literature, not really science fiction. Literature is about characters; science fiction is about plot and setting. The real story here is about the characters and seeing them engage with different and changing stimuli. Certainly, there is a plot and setting, but both are shifting, almost dreamlike affairs, with no fixed points.

I enjoyed the story. I would recommend it to someone with a high tolerance for ambiguity and reflection.

[Michael Whiteman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an alternate history and a deep psychological portrait of a pair of identical twins. It takes on some of Christopher Priest's regular themes - duality and doubles, war, the unreliability of memory, parallel or fantasy/imagined worlds - but stands as one of his strongest.

The idea of Rudolf Hess' flight to Scotland bringing a peace between Britain and Germany in 1941 is a nice choice of "branching" for the alternate history but the actual speculative aspects are less to do with the future impact of the changed events and more about the time leading up to them.

The framing story does go into the effects of one outcome but the frame is only about 1/10th of the book. The meat is the personal journals and rememberings of each of the twins.

Given that one twin is an RAF bomber pilot and the other is a conscientious objector, we get the expected contemplation on the role of war and whether it can ever be moral. I didn't feel that one side was shown to be the "correct" view and the emphasis is more on the doubts that plague even the most strongly-held convictions.

Churchill is perhaps the exception here but, even then, we see how differently things can go when strong personalities are convinced one way or the other.

As usual for Priest, there are no simple answers to exactly what is going on. The plot jumps back and forward in time and between narrators, characters' identities are called into question and which timeline is the "real" one is not going to be revealed. I don't think it is really relevant; the interest is in the doubts and possibilities that the different and sometimes contradictory events raise.

I could see people dismissing the ending as cheap but I think it is earned by the story. Overall, one of Priest's best that I've read.

[Hakim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am baffled by the rating of this novel on this platform. It does not even begin to do justice to such a profound and incomparable work of art.

The immersion into The Separation was very unsettling, in a very good way. It taps into a deep, complex sense of mystery, the horrors of WWII, the difficult relationship between a set of twins, and it messes with you until the very end, in pure Priest fashion.

Some of the characters are well known historical figures. I tend to dislike this trope, but in this book, Priest uses them brilliantly, in a way that enriches the plot, and instills tension and grandeur into the narrative. The author's ability to develop his characters organically truly stands out as one of the main qualities of the novel. The concept of a rift in reality caused by the separation of twins is also astoundingly original.

If it were for me, I would categorize this as alt history or literary horror, not science fiction. This matters little, however, as The Separation will blow your mind regardless of genre.

[Kriegslok · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first book I've read by Christopher Priest but I'll be tracking down the rest now to see if they are as good as good. There are several interwoven alternate histories spread across the Twentieth Century and (I think) it is left to the reader to decide which is "real". The story is structured around win brothers growing up immediately before the outbreak of WWII. The author has done a pretty good job at injecting a convincing air of authenticity to the events (real and imagined). The book also deals with the moral predicament of pacifism in the face of a genocidally inclined aggressor.I found the detailed accounts of the bomber crews flights and feelings particularly good. The book also raises the issue of how history is created and presented and remains a living thing always subject to the conditions under which it is created or reinterpreted. A rewarding read and one it pays to be in an alert state of mind for.