There’s humour and Nazi horror in equal measure in Allen Walker’s brave new WW2 novel, finds Lucy Bryson.
By Lucy Bryson
On September 1, 1939, Hitler launched an invasion of Poland that triggered the start of World War II. The battle for Poland only lasted about a month before a Nazi victory. But the invasion plunged the world into a war that would continue for almost six years and claim the lives of tens of millions of people.
Allen Walker’s exceptional new novel, The Strength of Wills, tells the remarkable, and at times heart-wrenching true story of two Polish men fleeing that German force.
In his introduction, Walker sets the brutal scene: “Buildings were torn apart by the huge eight-inch guns of the Schleswig Holstein, supported by Ju-87 dive-bombers, familiarly known as Stukas, along with Ju-88s and Me-110 fighter-bombers…their incessant thrum punctuated by the terrifying screams of the dive-bombing Stukas.”
At the centre of the action is Jedrek, a Polish teenager who, after losing his home and mother in a Nazi bombing, begins a perilous, 2,500-mile escape across war-torn Europe. Injured and afraid, he encounters the very worst of humanity before meeting an older man who takes him under his wing. Together, the pair forge an unlikely, moving friendship and strike for freedom.
Walker based the book on the true story of a Polish immigrant who he met in England in the early 1980s. He spent the next 30 years bringing those graphic events to the page through the medium of historical fiction. Walker necessarily tackles the shocking violence heads-on; at times, its unflinching descriptions of the horrors or war – including sexual abuse – make for difficult reading. But the horror is tempered with humour, and with engaging, snappy dialogue throughout. Maps and detailed footnotes about key events are especially helpful.
The Strength of Wills is an impressive, emotionally-charged work of fiction that is highly recommended.
The Strength of Wills is available now on Amazon priced £12.90 in paperback and £4.99 as an eBook. For further information, visit www.allenwalker.me