Earthly Creatures

A riveting, epic historical novel set in 1940's Germany. For all her life, idealistic 20-year-old bookworm Magdalena Arber has been split down the middle: veering wildly between fidelity to indoctrinated Nazi beliefs, and her father's humanist values. Then comes the summons-the Nazi War Labour Service is conscripting her into a teaching position in East Prussia. Magda is elated. It's a release from the cosy cage of childhood, and a chance to form young minds. She enters a lush rural world of forests, lakes, and meadows where order prevails. Yet there are monstrous hands out to shape the whole continuum of earthly creatures. The Gestapo are a lurking darkness. There is bombing further East, and news of a moving Russian front. Will Alt Schönbek burn as well? Can Magda survive?

Stevie Davies is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at Swansea University. She has published widely in the fields of fiction, literary criticism, biography, and popular history. Her work has been longlisted for the Booker and Orange Prizes and has won The Fawcett Society Prize and The Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year award. Her novel The Web of Belonging (1997) was adapted as a Channel 4 television film. Her novel The Element of Water (2001) was long-listed for the Booker and Orange Prizes and won the Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year in 2002. Stevie has three children who are the joy of her life. She is a cyclist and sea-swimmer. Davies has been called 'lyrical yet pitiless' in her dissection of the past (Helen Dunmore, The Guardian), whilst her prose is known as 'quiet, delicate, supple' (Nicholas Murray, The Independent).