This is a powerful novel of depth and intensity, and one that subtly changes mood from cocktail- and opium-fuelled larks to despair and degradation
Sunday Times
Gripping and moving ... Francesca Brill is a very good writer indeed and I was sucked into the story until I was no longer aware of things going on around me, only ... Read moreof what was going on to the characters I had grown to love, and an era I knew very little about but which was instantly fascinating. High quality story-telling
Simon Sebag Montefiore
With shocking vividness Brill describes the violence of the occupation and sensitively explores the compromises, both moral and emotional, of people caught up in desperate situations. It is a romantic novel, but it's tough and tragic too, a gritty tale of passion and wartime endurance
Eithne Farry
Daily Mail
A wonderfully sage and gripping novel
Spectator Books of the Year
A haunting tale of love's struggle to survive against all odds. A bold and beautifully written debut
Mark Mills, author of The Savage Garden
A tumultuous, passionate, fierce story of wartime love
Daily Express
A fiercely imagined and deeply felt story of complicated wartime love. I could see every scene
Rosie Alison, author of The Very Thought of You
The Harbour is an exceptional first novel: an intelligent romance immersed in its historical setting, and with a thread of steel running through it. Layers of race, role, sex, politics and sexual politics meld to make a much tougher, more interesting novel than a casual glance might suggest. We need more love stories like this
Louisa Young
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