Children of the Sun
Max Schaefer
1970: 14-year-old Tony becomes seduced by the neo-nazi movement and is sucked into a world of brutal racist violence and bizarre ritual. It’s a milieu in which he must hide his homosexuality, in which every encounter is potentially explosive. 2003: James, an aspiring screenwriter, begins to research the far right in Britain, and its secret gay membership. Hie two narrative threads of this extraordinarily assured and ambitious first novel follow Tony through the 1970s, 80s and 90s, as the neo-nazi movement splinters and weakens, and James through a year in which he becomes dangerously immersed in his research. He joins far-right websites. He receives threatening phone calls. And then the lives of these two very different men intersect unforgettably... CHILDREN OF THE SUN is an extraordinary debut - it is bold and panoramic, but also a work of great imaginative sympathy and range; a novel of unblinking honesty but also of deep feeling. Written with elegance and a sly wit, it illuminates the surprisingly thin line that separates aggression from tenderness, and gives us a picture of a Britain that is strange yet utterly convincing.