The Occupation by Chloe Adams – Winner of the Penguin Literary Prize 2024 -Our Review (Signed Editions)

Winner of the 2024 Penguin Literary Prize ‘Assured, deft, sophisticated. Chloe Adams is the real deal.’ EMILY BITTO Our Review… The hauntingly beautiful novel that won the Penguin Literary Award (2024). The Occupation tells the extraordinary true story of Mary Egan, a young woman who steps into a world few of her time ever saw, and is forced to make decisions of love, loss, and unimaginable consequence. The novel opens in a stylish inner-city café, where Mary and her cousin Tess – so alike they might be sisters – sit facing one another. Their roles seem almost reversed: Tess trembles with anxiety, while Mary wears an uncanny calm. When Tess asks Mary for her unborn child, Mary replies, “There’s a whole world out there, ..that we didn’t know existed. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.  A world where men decide everything on a whim, in the blink of an eye. Where the good aren’t really good at all, not even a tiny bit.” A year earlier, Mary stands mesmerised on the deck of a ship, watching themountains of Kure, Japan rise from the sea. Australian forces have established a base in Hiroshima Prefecture, and as Mary settles into the occupation, she encounters expatriates who seem untouched by the shattered land and thesorrow of its people. Then she meets Sully, an Australian journalist with shadows in his eyes. In his presence, Mary’s once-innocent view of the world – what she thought she believed about duty, about purpose, about herself begins to fracture. This is a love story… but also a story of race and culture. It is the remarkable and powerful story of lives torn asunder by war and circumstance and by unbearable choices. A superb and spellbinding read! Review by Nicole