Day by AL Kennedy

Alfred Day wanted his war. In its turmoil he found his proper purpose as the tail-gunner in a Lancaster bomber; he found the wild, dark fellowship of his crew, and - most extraordinary of all - he found Joyce, a woman to love. But that's all gone now - the war took it away. Maybe it took him, too.

Now it's 1949 and Alfred is doing the impossible again, winding back time to see where he lost himself. He has taken the role of an extra in a POW film. Shipped out to Germany and an ersatz camp, he picks his way through the clichés that will become all that's left of his war and begins to do what he's never dared - to remember.

Recommended by Sophie Moxon, Head of Programme

I thought this was a superb and stunning book and a very worthy winner of the 2007 Costa Award. A L Kennedy's writing is startlingly beautiful and her description of the horror and dehumanising nature of war is one of the most powerful I've ever read. Some parts of the book are almost unreadably disquieting but, due to the tinges of black humour and the humanity of her characters, the bleakness is never unremitting.

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