Sufferance
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When an Eastern European country is invaded and occupied by a brutal enemy, a well-intentioned man offers shelter to a young girl from a different community. He assumes that the arrangement will be temporary. However, time passes and the enemy’s hatred of the girl’s community leads to the gradual but pitiless exclusion and then persecution of its members and anyone trying to help them. The man has put himself and his family in danger. Gradually the girl turns into a hated prisoner whose presence imperils her hosts. The wife suffers a breakdown while the girl is gradually revealed to have her own demons. Her disruptive presence opens underlying rifts within the family as the man’s two daughters come to resent her presence. None of their neighbours - nor even their friends and relatives – can be trusted not to betray their dangerous secret. As the growing threat from outside puts an intolerable strain on the family, the man eventually finds himself confronted with a terrible choice.
“Sufferance is an important novel. Powerful … brilliant … vivid … It's an honest and unflinching encounter with the darkness that ever threatens the whole bloody human endeavor everywhere. Even now. Especially now. … At the end … tears blurred my page.”
Valerie Martin, author of Property
“Exquisitely plotted and satisfying … a more well developed and satisfying work [than] last year’s Booker winner … shows the hand of an expert novelist”. The Observer
Contemporary classic.
“We are pulled into a confrontation with evil that it is easy to imagine happening here and now. Sufferance could well become a contemporary classic.”
“Palliser skilfully creates a sense of mounting dread and paranoia in a disturbing Kafka-esque parable.”
The Mail on Sunday
“A brilliantly clever novel, [that] refuses trite distinctions between good and bad in this slow burn psychological thriller which keeps the panic levels slowly rising until the very end.”
Jewish Chronicle
“A sinister undertone lurks throughout the narrative, and a real sense of doom overshadows. In the father, Palliser has created a rare character who in turns can be sympathetic and contemptible. His story races to an ending that leaves the reader stunned. This novel will evoke a full range of emotions. An impressive novel not to be missed.”
Historical Novels Review
“Palliser is a master at showing the subtle, gradual ways that a noose tightens around someone’s neck before they realize it’s happening.” Ottawa Review of Books
Ottawa Review of Books
“The simple prose with which the story unfolds only adds to the sinister feel of this skillfully crafted, dark little tale.”