The Pied Piper's Poison by Christopher Wallace

Pungent tales of World War Two converge with more distant memories of the Thirty Years War in this powerful, compelling debut novel.

The year is 1946. The war is over. A young British army doctor finds himself ordered to investigate a curious plague in a Polish refugee camp. What he finds there is deeply unsettling and harrowing...

Meanwhile, a colleague is much more concerned with unravelling uncannily similar events three hundred years old, events twisted by the centuries into their current, misshapen form, as the fairy-story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin...

Set in the Borderlands between Germany and Poland, this powerful first novel is reminiscent in mood, complexity and accomplishment of Pat Barker's World War One trilogy or Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong.

Chris Wallace lives in Edinburgh. This is his first book.

'Quite simply stunning.'
Brian Davis, Time Out

'Assured, ambitious... The novel's true achievement lies in its depiction of the chaos, despair, and privations which poisoned both victors and vanquished in the aftermath of the Second World War... a fascinating first novel.'
Michael Arditti, The Times

'Wallace's fine debut novel taps straight into the murderous black heart of the age... highly ambitious and stunningly successful.'
Peter Whittaker, Independent