Olivia Manning

As Rommel advances in wartorn Egypt, the lives of the civilian population come under threat. One such couple are Guy and Harriet Pringle, who have escaped the war in Europe only to find the conflict once more on their doorstep, providing a volatile backdrop to their own personal battles.

It is 1940, and Guy and Harriet Pringle and their friends in the English colony in Bucharest find their position growing ever more precarious....

In this exotic landscape Harriet gets to know her new husband and to wonder at the complexity of the apparently simple man she had married....

The first novel of the famous Balkan Trilogy, previously successfully adapted for BBC television, starring Emma Thompson and Kenneth Brannagh....

Bucharest has fallen, and Harriet and Guy Pringle have escaped to Athens in the nick of time to find several of their old acquaintances there already....