“A brilliantly written, fiercely intelligent story of ideas and of history. “(Chicago Sun-Times)

An internationally acclaimed writer whose previous novel was short listed for Britain’s Booker Prize, Jill Paton Walsh returns with a stunning work of conceptual and ideological daring that follows nine linked characters through an era of struggle, terror, and unthinkable sacrifice. Beginning in 1945 when a dazed young woman covered in blood enters an abandoned, mist-shrouded castle in Eastern Europe, Walsh carries the reader across five decades, from the death of fascism to the fall of Communism. Brilliantly wrought fiction, A Desert in Bohemia is also an intensely human story that probes the nature of duty and moral consequence through the eyes of exiles and refugees, innocents and zealots, the tragic and the damned. The result is a poignant, mesmerizing work certain to significantly expand the audience of one of the most versatile literary talents writing today.
ISBN: 0452282683
Publisher: A PLUME BOOK
Subtitle: A NOVEL
Author: JILL PATON WALSH