num_pages: 472
description: Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked out streets, illicit liaisons, sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch is the work of a truly brilliant and compelling storyteller. This is the story of four Londoners: three women and a young man with a past, drawn with absolute truth and intimacy. Kay, who drove an ambulance during the war and lived life at full throttle, now dresses in mannish clothes and wanders the streets with a restless hunger, searching. Helen, clever, sweet, much-loved, harbours a painful secret. Viv, a glamour girl, is stubbornly, even foolishly loyal, to her soldier lover. Duncan, an apparent innocent, has had his own demons to fight during the war. Their lives, and their secrets, connect in sometimes startling ways. War leads to strange alliances. Tender, tragic and beautifully poignant, set against the backdrop of feats of heroism both epic and ordinary, here is a novel of relationships that offers up subtle surprises and twists. The Night Watch is a thrilling and towering literary achievement.
language: English
title: The Night Watch
titlecomplete: The Night Watch
genres: Fiction, Historical, War, Queer, LGBT, British Literature, Lesbian, Adult, Historical Fiction, World War II
ratings_count: 30933
places: United Kingdom
awards: awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Booker Prize, awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Stonewall Book Award
category: Literature, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Orange Prize
category: Fiction Shortlist, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: James Tait Black Memorial Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Lambda Literary Award
category: Lesbian Fiction, awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Golden Crown Literary Award
category: Lesbian Dramatic/General Fiction
publisher: Virago