They are Trying to Break Your Heart

(Paperback)

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In 1994, Marko Novaks world is torn apart by the death of his best friend. Kemal Lekic, a young soldier in the darkest days of the Bosnian war, is killed in the shelling of their home town. But his body is never recovered. Marko flees to England, hoping to put his broken homeland and a dark secret behind him. In 2004, human rights researcher Anya Teal is following a tenuous lead in the hunt for a Bosnian man with blood on his hands. She is also clinging to the fragile hope that she can rebuild a relationship with her first love, William Howell. When Anya invites him to join her on a Christmas holiday in the Thai resort of Kao Lak, she is offering Will the chance to unpick the mistakes of their past, but Kao Lak may also be home to the man Anya is looking for. What no-one can know, is that a disaster as destructive as a war is approaching, detonated in the sea-bed of the Indian Ocean. In its wake, everything they thought they knew will be overturned.

Reviews

A pageturner of some considerable force. David Savill writes with a profound intelligence and compassion about subjects that really matter * Nathan Filer *
They Are Trying to Break Your Heart is a beautifully balanced and nuanced novel. Savill threads together the various strands of his story superbly to produce a novel full of the mystery and wonder of the world * Richard Skinner *
A remarkable book. They Are Trying To Break Your Heart moves with the force of a thriller, spanning decades and conjuring different continents, and their people, with ease. David Savill will break your heart, then put it back together again, page by page, in prose of aching emotional truth * Anna Hope, author of Wake *
This is the first book Ive read that truly represents the political climate of the twenty-first centurys first decade. Moving between Sarajevo and Thailand, this multi-layered, global novel tackles what happens in the face of unbearable trauma The story evokes a pointed and contemporary question: how can we dare to love, when everything around us is broken * Julia Bell *
Whisks the reader off to the gripping heart of foreign wars and shores ... A breathtaking debut that doesn't pull its punches * Tim Samuels *

Author Bio

In the last year of the Bosnian war, David lived as a teacher and a student among the refugees of Srebrenica, helping to organise a summer university for students in the safe-haven of Tuzla. Over the past fifteen years he has returned to Bosnia several times. Tuzla, and the real story of its Youth Day massacre, became the inspiration for the fictional town of Stovnik. In an eight-year career as a BBC Current Affairs journalist, David worked on Panorama, This World, Real Story, World at One and PM. In 2004, he arrived on the beaches of Phuket two days after the Indian Ocean Tsunami. He spent the next six months in Thailand and Sri Lanka, where he made two documentaries about the aftermath of the disaster. David now has two children and teaches Creative Writing at St Marys University, London. davidsavill.com