The German Ward

The love story of the year: a breathtaking new novel from the author of global bestsellers The Dictionary of Lost Words and The Bookbinder of Jericho. A story of love between enemies behind the lines of WW1 and the Australian artist who captures their secret.

This is a novel about desire: the desire for sensation when trauma has left you numb; the desire to observe and record when your perspective is not valued; the desire to understand the past when only fragments remain.

On the front lines of France in 1915, an English nurse and a German doctor fall in love. Her name is Tilda, his name is Hugo and he is a prisoner of war. Their love is forbidden and doomed, and it would have gone unrecorded if not for Tilda’s friend, the Australian artist Iso Rae. Denied the chance to be an official war artist because she is a woman, Iso paints the war regardless, and glimpses of Hugo and Tilda make it into her work. A century later, when these drawings are discovered by a researcher, they become a puzzle for her to solve: who are these lovers, what became of them, and what story was Iso trying to tell? In this luminous tale of hope in the midst of darkness, Pip Williams expands the world of her bestselling novels The Dictionary of Lost Words and The Bookbinder of Jericho. Sensual and sophisticated, this is one of Australia’s most significant writers reaching the height of her skills.