The Dancer at World's End

Willoughby’s new landlady at Gladstone Terrace is not what he expects. The flamboyant Ruby Hoffman wears a green beret on which she’s pinned a velvet bird by its feet, explaining that she busks with her cousin, Gregor – Ruby playing accordion while Gregor dances. Ruby and Gregor, born nine years and one country apart, are bound to each other by a family weighed down with sacrifice in the Dutch resistance on one side and Nazi collusion on the other. While Ruby’s colourful persona hides a brittle fragility, Gregor’s burden of guilt is channelled into caring for others, feeding their strange group of tenants, each barely clinging to the edges of society. But when the enigmatic Leda Godwin turns up, wanting to know Gregor’s story, the delicate balance of their lives is shaken.

Peopled with intriguing and memorable characters and told with exquisite precision, The Dancer at World’s End explores the legacy of violence, whether perpetrated by those committing genocide or those opposing them and how the stories handed down to us of who we are or should be, who we should love or hate, go on shaping lives across generations.

An extraordinary sequel to the powerful events recounted in The Green Table, this is a courageous, heart-rending and important story. Set in mid-seventies London, the story goes back to Nazi Germany, as replete with pomp and ambition as it is with horror, and to post-War Netherlands, building a complex tale of identity, survival and grace.