Page 105 - NEW TITLES JANUARY - MARCH 2024

ADVANCE INFORMATION

To the River

Why would you risk your life and all

that you love for a stranger?

Huge de Burgh

KEY SELLING POINTS
To the River tells of a different kind of heroism to that of soldiers and partisans. An escaped prisoner and
a peasant widow hate each other; until each recognises what they admire.
Against her will, she takes a lost child by the hand; then Lucia’s life changes. To the River explores the
origins of altruism.
Approaching the river, crossing the icy mountain, a stranger gives them his coat. To the River questions the
stereotypes of good and bad in the Second World War.
With an afterword by Max Hastings

Umbria 1943. Nazi troops are massacring whole villages in retaliation for help being given to even a single
fugitive. Outside a pretty country town is a prison camp of six hundred British, Commonwealth and American
soldiers seething with hatred for Italians.

When young widow Lucia does a deal with FitzGerald, all six hundred escape into the hills or make their way
out of Nazi occupied Italy. FitzGerald himself moves from farm to farm until his contempt for Italians turns
into admiration for the impoverished people who risk everything to succour a stranger. He sees in the women,
children and old people left on the farms, a courage greater than that of soldiers. Instead of taking up arms
again, he shepherds the villagers as they fly from extermination.

But can he, and his rescuer, escape To the River, the border between two armies?

Huge de Burgh was Walt Disney Chair of Media and Communications at Schwarzman College of International
Relations, Tsinghua University, until 2022 and now writes full-time. He has published books on investigative
journalism, Chinese affairs and media. His next novel tells the stories of Chinese students in London as
hostility between the Anglophone and Chinese worlds grows.

Publication Date: 28th February 2024 £9.99 ISBN: 9781805142485
Thema subject category: FJMS – Second World War fiction
paperback 216 x 138 mm 512 pp Portrait

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