The Death of the Fronsac: A Novel

Waterstones Thriller of the Month for November 2018

'A marvellous meditation on what it is to have lost a country and a past, and to be adrift in search of what might once again constitute a home' - Times Literary Supplement.

A story of sabotage, betrayal, and the terrible sadness of exile.

Scotland, 1940.

The Fronsac, a French warship, blows up in the Firth of Clyde. The disaster is witnessed by three locals. Jackie, a young girl who thinks she caused the explosion by running away from school. Her mother Helen, a spirited woman married to a dreary young officer; and their lodger, a Polish soldier whose country has just been erased from the map by Hitler and Stalin.

All their lives will be changed by The Death of the Fronsac.

Acclaimed journalist and writer Neal Ascherson turns his considerable insight to fiction in an epic tale triggered by the mysterious destruction of a French warship off the wartime coast of Greenock. Nuanced and carrying a lifetime of understanding of both setting and subject, The Death of the Fronsac is a sweeping tale of a century split by war and the consequence of its horrors and betrayals.