The Dark of Summer

by Eric Linklater

Overview

In the early years of the Second World War an army officer is sent to the Faroe Islands to investigate rumours of a collaboration with the Nazi regime in Norway. What he finds changes lives, not least his own.

No one who reads this book will forget the frozen corpse tied to a chair in an icehouse guarded by two drunken seamen, or the raging storm which batters their, ship as they carry the body to Shetland.

That's just the beginning. As the tale takes grip, the reader becomes haunted, just as the characters are haunted by a sense of guilt and betrayal.

One of the finest of Linklater's later, deeper, darker novels, The Dark of Summer combines national and family histories as it sets out to understand the past, redeem the corrosion of memory and find meaning in a world of divided loyalties.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781448207268
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	12/01/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	262
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Eric Linklater (1899-1974) wrote scores of novels for adults and children. He was also a journalist in India, commander of a wartime fortress in the Orkney Islands, and rector of Aberdeen University.
Eric Linklater was born in 1899 in Penarth, Wales. He was educated in Aberdeen, and was initially interested in studying medicine; he later switched his focus to journalism, and became a full-time writer in the 1930's.

During his career, Linklater served as a journalist in India, a commander of a wartime fortress in the Orkney Islands, and rector of Aberdeen University. He authored more than twenty novels for adults and children, in addition to writing short stories, travel pieces, and military histories, among other works.

Editorial Reviews

Originally published in the U.K. in 1957, this spiritually sensitive novel of wartime regret spans many years, culminating in a strangely hatched romance. Ex-army officer Tony Chisholm is walking with his wife, Gudrun, near his home in the Scottish Shetland Islands in the 1950s when he spots a dead body half-buried in the peat. The sight instantly triggers a series of memories. Leaping back in time to 1941, the narrative describes how Chisholm is sent to the Faroe Islands (north of the Shetlands) to investigate rumors of Nazi collaboration. After discovering that two drunken Scandinavian seamen are keeping the frozen corpse of a Nazi sympathizer in their icehouse, Chisholm goes on the trail of Mungo Wishart, a wealthy Shetland Islands landowner who was seen conversing with the now-frozen collaborator. The sea journey to Wishart's remote home is rough and treacherous. At its end, Chisholm is lovingly cared for by Wishart's wife and his young son and daughter, Olaf and Gudrun. Although Wishart reveals nothing during his interrogation, he commits suicide shortly after Chisholm's departure from Shetland, tantamount to a confession. Chisholm goes on to see action in WWII and the Korean War, and in Korea he encounters Olaf again, now a young soldier; fate later reunites him with Gudrun, whom he eventually marries. The author's rich sense of atmosphere and psychological landscape gives the novel an impressive power, which flags only when Linklater pushes through the war years so quickly that the emotional effect of battle experiences--the loss of Chisholm's arm, his daily witness of death--is ignored. But Linklater gracefully blends literary prose and a tightly crafted plot to tell a haunting story of guilt and redemption. (Dec.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

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