The Girl Who Fell From The Sky

'Masterly . . . A tour de force that grips and never lets go' Max Davidson, Mail on Sunday

Half French, half British, Marian Sutro has always been an outsider. But after being recruited by SOE to go undercover, it seems her hybrid status - and fluent French - will be put to good use. Marian finds herself parachuting into south-west France, having been trained in sabotage, how to perform under interrogation and how to kill.

Her real destination, however, is Paris, where she must seek out old family friend Clément Pelletier, a nuclear physicist of urgent significance to her superiors. As she struggles through the lethal landscape of the Occupation towards this reunion, she realises that war changes everything, and neither love nor fatherland may be trusted.

'I read late into the night and cried a little when I was done. Mawer's set pieces are so beautiful you want to read them two or three times over. He writes about fear and about bravery better than any contemporary novelist I know' Rachel Cooke, Observer

'Such rewarding reading . . . Mawer is a genuinely great contemporary writer' Simon Schama, Financial Times

'Marian's story is unforgettable' Spectator

An 'utterly gripping' tale of love and espionage in Occupied France by the Man Booker Prize shortlisted author of The Glass Room (Daily Mail)

Marian Sutro is an outsider: the daughter of a diplomat, brought up on the shores of Lake Geneva and in England, half French, half British, naive yet too clever for her own good. But when she is recruited from her desk job by SOE, the Special Operations Executive, to go undercover in wartime France, it seems her hybrid status - and fluent French - will be of service to a greater, more dangerous cause.

Trained in sabotage, dead-drops, how to perform under interrogation and how to kill, Marian parachutes into south-west France, her official mission to act as a Resistance courier. But her real destination is Paris, where she must seek out family friend Clément Pelletier, once the focus of her adolescent desires. A nuclear physicist engaged in the race for a new and terrifying weapon, he is of urgent significance to her superiors. As she struggles through the strange, lethal landscape of the Occupation towards this reunion, what completes her training is the understanding that war changes everything, and neither love nor fatherland may be trusted.

'There are many shades of Graham Greene here... [The Girl Who Fell From the Sky] delivers its story with the same delicate, stropped-razor deadliness that creeps up on you like Harry Lime in the shadows, nastily irresistible' -Financial Times


'Mawer cranks up the tension; as spy stuff this is as good as Le Carré or Eric Ambler, no higher praise possible' -The Scotsman