Snowleg, The (2004 Longlisted For Man Booker Prize)

Description:
A young Englishman goes to Cold War Leipzig for a weekend with a group of student actors and, during his brief visit beyond the Iron Curtain, falls for an East German girl who is just beginning to be aware of the horrendous way her country is governed. Her misery touches him, her love excites him, but he is too frightened to help. He spends 19 years suppressing the strength of his feelings for the girl he knew only by her nickname 'Snowleg' - until one day, with Germany by now united, he decides to go back and look for her. But who is she now, how will his having once abandoned her have affected her life, and how will he find her? 'Snowleg' is the story of more than one sundered love, of both broken dreams and damaged families. The central figure of the novel, who grows up as an Englishman, chooses to live in Berlin. He is a senior doctor; but his life is a startling mixture of romantic, of erratic, of dissolute behaviour. For long years, he nurses the secret of Snowleg and his longing for a love he had the chance to grasp but failed to take.

Author Biography:
Nicholas Shakespeare is the author of The Vision of Elena Silves (1989), winner of the Somerset Maugham Award; The High Flyer, for which he was chosen for the Granta list in 1993 and The Dancer Upstairs which was the American Libraries Association's Best Novel of 1997. His biography, Bruce Chatwin (1999), was published to unstinting critical acclaim.