Jake Wallis Simons’ second novel, The English German Girl, which will be released in 2011, is a historical novel set during WWII. The heroine, a teenage Berliner by the name of Rosa Klein, is sent to England on a Kindertransport in the 1930s. Once in the UK she is evacuated to the Norfolk countryside, and then returns to London where she becomes a nurse, serving at the London Hospital in Whitechapel during the “Little Blitz.” Read the first page.

Jake’s first novel, The Exiled Times of a Tibetan Jew, was described by the Independent on Sunday as “incredibly funny and clever,” and named by them as a Book of the Year. The late Beryl Bainbridge called it “entertaining, provocative and original.”

A startlingly original black comedy with a hint of Benjamin Button, it is based around a fictional community of Jewish Tibetans founded by a ‘rabbi’ who claims to be the reincarnation of Moses. This absurdist world provides an intriguing backdrop for an investigation into culture, heritage and identity that will have you swinging between vigorous chuckles and troubled chin-stroking. Read the first page.

Buy it on Amazon