The Shape of Her

1945. After the fall of the Third Reich, fourteen-year-old Ruth offends her newly-Communist boss. As punishment, like so many German women and girls, she is brutally assaulted by Red Army soldiers. Ruth escapes with the help of the Werwölfe - the child terrorist network set up by Hitler - of which she is a member. She returns to her home, only to find it under attack. She is given a sheet of music which has a code showing the location of hidden diamonds intended to fund the guerrilla war waged by the Werwölfe against the Russian occupation. Ruth flees for her life to the relative safety of West Germany. Some two decades later, the consequences return to threaten Ruth's daughter Katya and shatter her hitherto ordered existence. Facing danger at every turn, Katya must seek out the diamonds and follow her mother's wishes by returning them to their rightful owners. Expertly evoking the post-war world of a divided Germany, Anne Lauppe-Dunbar's novel is a thrilling and fraught journey across a country haunted by its brutal past where secrecy and double-dealing hold sway. The narrative is salted with nationalist fanaticism, runic secret codes and the baroque fantasies of Hitler and Himmler on the one hand, and the brutalities of the Cold War on the other. National, political and family loyalties are explored, together with shades of guilt, duty and responsibility, and the status and resilience of women, and the mother and daughter in particular. The Shape of Her is both a page-turning adventure and an investigation into human nature.

Anne Lauppe-Dunbar is a novelist and Director of Creative Writing at University of Swansea, and editor of the Swansea Review. Her parents were born in Germany and survived the war to meet in South Africa, where Anne was born. The family left during apartheid, returning to Germany before settling in the UK. She has published short stories and poems in collections from Seren, Cinnamon and Seventh Quarry. Her first novel, Dark Mermaids was shortlisted for the Impress Prize, Cinnamon First Novel Prize and the Cross Sports Book Awards New Writer of the Year Prize.