Once the Deed Is Done: 'A crime novel in the sense that TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is a crime novel. One in which a whole community is culpable' Financial Times

Once the Deed Is Done is a novel by Jane Seiffert, set in Germany after World War II. It follows the story of a boy who witnesses strange events and a refugee camp on the heathland. The townspeople close ranks, but the town children are curious about the refugees, and Benno can't carry his secret alone. The novel balances the tumultuous reach of history with the everyday concerns of ordinary people.

Format: Hardback
Length: 464 pages
Publication date: 06 March 2025
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

The new novel from the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of "The Dark Room" and "A Boy in Winter" is a complex, intelligent, and deeply compassionate novel that explores the fate of displaced people in the hazardous, dirty backwash of the Second World War. The Guardian describes it as a "complex, intelligent, deeply compassionate novel about the unglamorous aftermath of war." Andrew Miller praises the novel's prose as "so lucid, so understated" and notes that it "reverberates in ways that only haunt the reader more and more deeply, long after its last page." Paul Harding, the Booker prize author of "This Other Eden," loves that her novels take her to unexplored places and times and has brought to life a complex interaction between survivors on both sides with humanity and compassion. Linda Grant, the author of "To Be Truly Alive," believes that to be truly alive is to make choices and to love. Northern Germany, 1945, is a time of war and risk, and Benno is witness to something he barely understands. Peace brings more soldiers, but English this time, and Red Cross staff officers. Ruth is given charge of a refugee camp on the heathland, crowded with former forced labourers. As more keep arriving, she hears whispers and rumours of dark secrets about that snowy night. The townspeople close ranks, shutting their mouths and minds to the winter's events, but the town children are curious about the refugees on their doorstep, and Benno can't carry his secret alone. The novel is a marvel, juggling multiple perspectives and emotions. It is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of love in the face of adversity.

Weight: 590g
Dimension: 223 x 145 x 39 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780349014166