The Photographer's Wife

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Jerusalem, 1920: in an already fractured city, eleven-year-old Prudence feels the tension rising as her architect father launches an ambitious and wildly eccentric plan to redesign the Holy City by importing English parks to the desert. Prue, known as the little witness, eavesdrops underneath the tables of tearooms and behind the curtains of the dance-halls of the citys elite, watching everything but rarely being watched herself. Around her, British colonials, exiled Armenians and German officials rub shoulders as they line up the pieces in a political game: a game destined to lead to disaster. When Prues father employs a British pilot, William Harrington, to take aerial photographs of the city, Prue is uncomfortably aware of the attraction that sparks between him and Eleanora, the English wife of a famous Jerusalem photographer. And, after Harrington learns that Eleanoras husband is a nationalist, intent on removing the British, those sparks are fanned dangerously into a flame. Years later, in 1937, Prue is an artist living a reclusive life by the sea with her young son, when Harrington pays her a surprise visit. What he reveals unravels her world, and she must follow the threads that lead her back to secrets long-ago buried in Jerusalem. The Photographers Wife is a powerful story of betrayal: between father and daughter, between husband and wife, and between nations and people, set in the complex period between the two world wars.

Reviews

A haunting, original and beautifully written tale * Paul Torday, bestselling author of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, on A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar *
Bold and elegant ... An ambitious, accomplished debut * Daily Mail *
Sprightly, engaging and lovingly written * Guardian *
A delicate yet gutsy spirit of adventure pervades its pages ... Joinson writes with a control and vivacity that fires our own dreams of flight * Emylia Hall, author of The Book of Summers *
Captivating Vivid descriptions of exotic landscapes combined with those of Prudences solitary life in a cabin by the sea give the story an ethereal quality An engaging read filled with tension and surprises on every page * The Lady *

Author Bio

Suzanne Joinson is an award-winning writer of fiction and non-fiction whose work has appeared in, among other places, the New York Times, Vogue, Aeon, Lonely Planet travel writing anthologies and the Independent on Sunday. Her first novel, A Lady Cyclists Guide to Kashgar (2012), was translated into sixteen languages and was a national bestseller. She lives in Sussex. suzannejoinson.com / @suzyjoinson