Engleby

I'm senior producer Mia Sorrenti.

How can fiction bring us closer to the lives caught up in the aftermath of war? Today's episode is from our recent live event with Sebastian Foulkes, one of Britain's best-loved novelists and author of books including Birdsong, Q and Traces, Engleby and Charlotte Grey.

Folks joined us at Conway Hall to discuss his new novel, Farewell to Eden, a story of faith, conflict and love set in post-war Britain and the final days of the British Mandate in Palestine.

He explores the history behind the novel, from the testimonies of soldiers held in the Imperial War Museum archives to his own father's experiences serving in Palestine.

There's a massive plot twist towards the end, which I didn't see coming when I started writing the book, to be perfectly honest.

But it occurred to me about halfway through.

And then, rather like with Engleby, a book I wrote 20 or so years ago, it occurred to me halfway through that this mysterious disappearance of a young student at Cambridge University, there was only one person who could have been responsible for it.

And I went back to the beginning of the book and I tried to see if I'd been fair with the reader.