Nazi invasion

Ever since the BBC’s Dad’s Army (which ran from 1968 to 1977), it’s been hard to keep a straight face when talking about the Home Guard. Just thinking about Corporal Jones one beat out from the rest of the platoon during drill makes us go weak. Sinclair McKay’s book on the subject, actually called Dad’s Army, does not shirk from the hilarious aspects of this domestic front line of two million volunteers at its peak, many of whom did a full day’s work before turning out to practise defending their country all evening and sometimes all night.

In May 1940, as the Nazis invade Belgium, the residents of a sedate apartment block in Place Brugmann, Brussels, wake to find that their longtime neighbours, the Raphaëls, have disappeared. Alice Austen uses this moment as the starting point for her subtle debut novel about how a diverse group of Belgians react to the Nazi occupation. She tells her story in snapshots, writing in the multiple first-person voices of those who remain at 33 Place Brugmann and those who flee. Charlotte is a young artist who may not see colours, but has ‘vision’. Miss Hobert is a gossip with ‘a rabid imagination’. The courageous and pragmatic Colonel Warlemont resists the occupation with the assistance of his dog Zipper.