How Many Miles To Babylon? by Jennifer Johnston
Synopsis
Alec and Jerry shouldn't have been friends: Alec's life was one of privilege, while Jerry's was one of toil. But this hardly mattered to two young men whose shared love of horses brought them together and whose whole lives lay ahead of them. When war breaks out in 1914, both Jerry and Alec sign up - yet for quite different reasons. On the fields of Flanders they find themselves standing together, but once again divided: as officer and enlisted man. And it is there, surrounded by mud and chaos and death, that one of them makes a fateful decision whose consequences will test their friendship and loyalty to breaking point.
About the Author
Jennifer Johnston is one of the foremost Irish writers of her, or any generation. She has won the Whitbread Prize (The Old Jest), the Evening Standard Best First Novel Award (for The Captains And The Kings), the Yorkshire Post Award, Best Book of the Year (twice, for The Captains And The Kings and How Many Miles To Babylon?). She has also been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, with Shadows On Our Skin, and has won the Irish Book Awards Lifetime Achievement prize, in company with Seamus Heaney, John Banville and John McMahon.