In the original dustsheet. Green cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

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This Whitbread Book of The Year Award winner for 1990 is the final novel of the “Catastrophe Practice” series. Set in the 1920s and 30s it tells the story of two young radicals, Max and Eleanor, who meet, love, separate and come together again during the maelstrom of the Spanish Civil War.

Review: “Hopeful Monsters” 1990 winner of the Whitbread award follows the tale of two unlikely soul mates. A German daughter of a Physicist and an English son of a biologist. Their Journeys take the reader across the globe, from the end of the first world war to the beginning of the second, entangling their lives with the major developments of a turbulent century filled with war, loss and hope.

Mosley, son of infamous Oswald Mosley, founder of the first British union of fascists, captures his own complicated relationship between child and their parents perfectly and at times we can see the separation between child and parent and the pain it brings.

Both Eleanor and Max introduce the reader to the workings of their family lives in post war Britain and Germany, inviting us into the workings of politics and science. A huge array of characters are introduced and famous faces are inspirational to the book, most notable Albert Einstein. The Novel takes on an unique style, bouncing between the two lovers, recounting their lives up until they reunited for the second time. Every Chapter takes on a different and personal, from struggles to romances, episode of their lives.

Although this style keeps the book flowing well, it can be confusing to the reader particularly when new narrators are introduced at the latter of the book. However the style is clever, unique and exciting.

This Novel incorporates a huge amount of ideas, thought and history of two great nations, two people destined to find one another and a century that has defined the world today. Not for the younger reader, but well suited for someone with a cryptic and open mind.

Nicholas Mosley, 3rd Baron Ravensdale, 7th Baronet, MC, FRSL (25 June 1923 – 28 February 2017), was an English novelist and biographer, including that of his father, Oswald Mosley, the founder of the British Union of Fascists.