Ella Morris: A Novel

'This is a bold and fascinating mystery novel of ideas. John David Morley enfolds science and human loss with great fictional cunning' Ian McEwan on The Book of Opposites

Spanning the decades from World War II to the Yugoslav conflict, Ella Morris is the story of a remarkable woman, and of the toll history takes on individual lives.

Born in Berlin on the eve of Hitler's rise to power, Ella Andrzejewski escapes Soviet-occupied Europe and finds a safe haven in England. Here, she marries George Morris, but subsequently falls in love with Claude de Marsay, a French student ten years her junior.

The intrusion of Claude upsets the balance of the Morris household, while the effects of Ella's traumatic past continue to be felt. As the decades pass and Europe lurches towards another conflict, Ella's children and grandchildren struggle to find their peace in a continent still reverberating with the echoes of war.

John David Morley was born in Singapore in 1948 and raised in Malaya and on Africa's Gold Coast before he went to school in England. He took his first job as a stagehand, followed by a spell teaching in Mexico. He spent three years studying in Japan, subject of his international bestseller PICTURES FROM THE WATER TRADE. Having made his home in Munich, the focus of Morley's life was in Central Europe, where for twenty-five years he worked as a location manager for Japanese TV and as a journalist for publication such as THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE, the OBSERVER and CONDÉ NAST TRAVELLER. A collection of his journalism, ENCOUNTERS, was published in 1990. His tenth novel, ELLA MORRIS, was published in 2014.

About John David Morley