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Zusatztext “Utterly authentic. . . . Afterwards [achieves] a coiling suspense driven more by psychology than by circumstance.” — The New York Times Book Review “Understated and offering no easy answers to the dilemmas it raises! Afterwards delves into how violence and trauma affect our ability to love. If relevance is what you look for in fiction! you need look no further. . . . Thought-provoking.” — Los Angeles Times “Like Pat Barker before her! Seiffert is examining the similar ways people protect themselves from heartbreak and their own bad deeds. It's not that the personal is political! but in Seiffert's eyes the historical is personal! too.” — Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel “Seiffert's superb new novel is her most integrated and accomplished work yet.”— Financial Times Informationen zum Autor Rachel Seiffert’s The Dark Room won a Betty Trask Award and the Los Angeles Times ’s Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Seiffert has also received a David T. K. Wong award from PEN International. After living in Scotland and Germany, she now resides in London. Klappentext When Alice and Joseph meet! they fall quickly into a tentative but sincere relationship. She is a nurse! he a house painter! and while both are still young and hopeful about this new love! each of them carries an emotional burden. Alice's father has been a yawning absence all her life! and just recently her beloved grandmother—who helped to raise her-passed away. For his part! Joseph refuses to speak about his experiences as a soldier in Northern Ireland! and Alice suspects that his general reticence hides an even more deeply troubled past. In this powerful story of guilt and privacy! Seiffert asks: To love someone! must you know everything about them? Leseprobe Chapter One Winter afternoon, five hours patrolling, seventeen minutes on the vehicle checkpoint and counting. Rain. Two cars, two drivers: one man, one woman. She was in the white car, three children with her. One adult passenger, male, in the other car, the red one. One multiple: four men on the rise, four in the fields, and four on the road. Two of us by the first car, two by the second. One round fired.There were reports to do, days afterwards when Joseph had to be interviewed. RUC and army. Debriefing, the doctor, the welfare officer. He vomited before the first one, with the police. It was the same afternoon, after they got back to the base. Joseph didn’t tell anybody about being sick, thought they’d smell it anyway, anyone who went near the bogs.Still had the sweat on his back and his hands when he was marched in to go over and over what happened. Six faces in the room, RUC and Red Caps, nobody Joseph recognised. There was the army solicitor too, who sat to one side of him and wrote things down while the others did the asking. Only two hours since Joseph was out on the road, maybe three, but it was still hard to get it all in the right order. MPs sitting back and watching, RUC wanting to hear it from him again and again, checking and checking, with the same and then with different questions.– What colour was the Astra?– Red.He’d said that before. – It was red.– Do you know how long it was there?No.– Before we started checking it?– Yes, you said it stopped a few metres away and waited. How long?He didn’t know.– They stopped too far back from us. Had the engine running. The whole time we were checking the car in front.Sounded stupid, everything he said made him sound like he was slow or something. It didn’t make much sense to Joseph either, now he tried to explain it.– Wasn’t safe to have the checkpoint up that long, you know? Had us all on edge, the last car hanging back when we should have been packing up.It was Armagh, it was getting dark and they’d been patrolling for hours, fields and roads. No buzz, no fuss. He hadn’t been expecting anything to...
