A novel set in an imagined 1944 in which Russia fell and the D-day landings were unsuccessful. Half of Britian is occupied. A young farmer's wife Sarah Lewis wakes to find her husband has disappeared along with all men in the valley. A mysterious German patrol arrives in the area, and Sarah begins a faltering acquaintance with one of the officers, who reveals their mission.

Nofel wedi'i lleoli ym 1940 dychmygol. Methodd y glaniadau D-day, ac mae hanner Prydain wedi'i goresgyn . Mae gwraig fferm Sarah Lewis yn dihuno ac yn darganfod bod ei gŵr wedi diflannu ynghyd â holl ddynion yr ardal. Mae Sarah yn dechrau cyfeillgarwch petrus gydag un o swyddogion y fyddin ac yn dechrau tynnu'r atebion...

Owen Sheers‘s first prose work, The Dust Diaries, won the 2005 Welsh Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. He has also written two poetry collections, The Blue Book and Skirrid Hill, for which he received a Somerset Maugham Award in 2006. The promise shown by these earlier works is more than met by this consummate first novel, which undoubtedly deserves a place alongside the works of Pat Barker, Sebastian Faulkes, Peter Ho Davies and other accomplished chroniclers of the intimate pain of war.

Reversing reality, Resistance is based on the premise that the Normandy landings failed and that Hitler’s Operation Sea Lion, the plan to invade and occupy Britain, went ahead successfully. In an isolated hill-farming valley in Wales, the women wake up one morning to find that all the men have disappeared overnight – silently, secretly and without explanation – leaving them to run the farms and face the invading enemy alone. Confused, grieving and angry, the women pool their strengths and resources, determined to survive until the men return. But everything is changed again by the arrival in the valley of a small patrol of war-weary German soldiers.

Focusing on the interaction between the two groups of traumatised men and women and using the isolated valley setting to huge effect, Sheers grasps and conveys the strange in-between-worlds feeling of those times when loss and disaster strike, when we seek to normalise and justify actions and events that are beyond our comprehension and our ability to absorb. Through his taut and skilful narrative, Sheers probes the stark and painful truths of what might have been if the war had gone differently, while his fine character portrayals and lack of authorial censure open us to a world in which personal integrity and discretion both defy and defeat commonly-held moral absolutes.

Suzy Ceulan Hughes

It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgment should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.

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