Archive for the ‘Fiction’ Category
“Well-researched and very moving. A fine tribute to the bravery of the Kindertransport.” (the Times)
April 8th, 2011
"A fine tribute to the bravery of the Kindertransport"
The Times reviews The English German Girl: “One morning in 1933, Dr Otto Klein is told that he may no longer have contact with patients because he is Jewish. He’s unfazed. “Almost 50 per cent of doctors in Berlin are of Jewish origin. They can’t do without us.” But over the years the family loses more and more.
Fighting to survive, they put 15-year-old Rosa on a Kindertransport train, to begin a new life in England. The distant cousins who are sponsoring her speak no German and were expecting her little sister; “Aunt Mimi” does not want a grown girl near her teenage son.
This well-researched and very moving novel is dedicated to the children of the Kindertransport and is a fine tribute to their bravery.” Visit the website
The English German Girl: “as compelling as Schindler’s List”
April 1st, 2011
"If you only read one novel this year, make it this one"
Review from Love Reading: “I was reminded very much of Sebastian Faulks’ Charlotte Gray when following Jake Wallis Simons’ heroine Rosa Klein. The background of Jewish suffering is every bit as compelling as Schindler’s List.
The English German Girl follows Rosa as her despairing parents manage to find her a place on one of the last Kindertransports to leave Berlin. It is a story powerfully told, demanding your complete attention, involving you in a story of heartbreak, love and loss as Rosa attempts to make a life and career for herself alone in this new bewildering country of Britain. It’s a film waiting to happen, although so vivid is Jake Wallis Simons’ description and attention to detail, I feel I’ve seen it already. If you only read one novel this year, make it this one.”
From Love Reading
JWS reads from The English German Girl
March 31st, 2011
Here Jake Wallis Simons reads from the later section of The English German Girl. It is 1943, at the start of the “little Blitz”. The heroine, Rosa, is working as a nurse in The London Hospital in Whitechapel. She is assigned to bring air raid casualties from the “Receiving Room” through to the wards to be treated. But when one patient is brought in, she gets more than she bargained for . . .
Music for The English German Girl
February 21st, 2011
My latest novel, The English German Girl, which comes out in April, took around five years to complete. For at least three of those years, in the back of my head I had a piece of music by the French composer Maurice Ravel. Written in 1914, it is part of a two-song set called “Deux mélodies hébraïques;” the first of these, “Kaddish,” seems to capture perfectly the mood of the novel. Here is is played beautifully and movingly by the wonderful British cellist Steven Isserlis. –JWS
Bookends: a novel I inherited
December 20th, 2010
NB: This was written for the Jewish Book Week 2011 programme, where JWS will be appearing
Vassily Grossman
I was having coffee with the master of my old college, Mark Damazer — who until recently was the controller of Radio 4 — when he made the striking statement that the 1959 novel Life and Fate, by Vassily Grossman, is “quite possibly the best book in the world.” This, of course, piqued my interest. I bought a copy. As thick as my daughter’s fist, and with just-big-enough print, Life and Fate tells the story of C20th Russia through the eyes of a single Jewish family, the Shaposhnikovs. Every page is dense with a vivid and intimate beauty, all set within a grand, sweeping narrative. The novel was confiscated by the KGB, and remained unpublished until it was smuggled into the West in 1980, where it was hailed as a masterpiece. In September, Radio 4 are going to have a Vassily Grossman season; I would heartily recommend everyone to read this book, which I inherited from Mark, in advance. He could just be right. It could be the best novel in the world.
Graphic short story
October 24th, 2010
This one’s called “Dadness.” It’s a story about, well, Dadness. Read the whole thing here.
A comic in words: Rip-off in Tel Aviv
March 1st, 2010
'the outside of the club, indecently exposed by the rising sun'
(First performed 29th February 2010 at Jewish Book Week / JCC Writers’ Football Literary Event, London)
The first panel. The picture is drawn from a bird’s eye perspective, looking down upon cramped rooftops beginning to bake. Cables and wires stretch from one side of the road to another, and in the background are Bauhaus-style apartment blocks jutting with cuboids. The caption reads: ‘November 2008. Tel Aviv, 4am. The sun rises on a city still silent with sleep’. Read the rest of this entry »
A Joke in Three Agonies – a monologue
February 5th, 2010
'You don't have any bananas, do you?'
First performed at the Literary Death Match Oxford, 4 November 2009
Spotlight on SPEAKER, dressed in smart suit, standing impassively. SPEAKER reaches into inside pocket and takes out a pair of sunglasses, puts them on, clearly impeding vision. SPEAKER delivers monologue in the rhetorical style of a preacher or a politician, without showing any sign of humour, whilst walking amongst the audience. SPEAKER returns to the stage for the final lines. Read the rest of this entry »
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