A true modern classic, THE SMALL BACK ROOM is a towering novel of the Second World War.
Sammy Rice is a weapons scientist, one of the ‘back room boys’ of the Second World War. A crippling disability has left him cynical and disillusioned – he struggles with a drink problem at home, and politics and petty pride at work. Worse still, he fears he is not good enough for the woman he loves.
The stakes are raised when the enemy begin to drop a new type of booby-trapped bomb, causing many casualties. Only Sammy has the know-how to diffuse it – but as he comes face to face with real danger, all his old inadequacies return to haunt him.
Can he, at last, prove his worth and put his demons to rest?
Sammy Rice is a weapons scientist, one of the ‘back room boys’ of the Second World War. A crippling disability has left him cynical and disillusioned – he struggles with a drink problem at home, and politics and petty pride at work. Worse still, he fears he is not good enough for the woman he loves.
The stakes are raised when the enemy begin to drop a new type of booby-trapped bomb, causing many casualties. Only Sammy has the know-how to diffuse it – but as he comes face to face with real danger, all his old inadequacies return to haunt him.
Can he, at last, prove his worth and put his demons to rest?
Newsletter Signup
By clicking ‘Sign Up,’ I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Hachette Book Group’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Use
Reviews
Perhaps the most successful British author to emerge during the war
Probably no other novelist of Mr. Balchin's value is so eminently and enjoyably readable . . . [He] never lets the reader down
One of the best writers, and certainly one of the best stylists, to come out of the war years
Balchin has been absurdly overlooked for too long
The novelist of men at work
I'd place him up there with Graham Greene
One of the hopes of British novel-writing . . . A writer of genius
Balchin writes about timeless things, the places in the heart
He tells a story gloriously
He can always be relied on to give us the set-up magnificently
A remarkable storyteller
A brilliant novelist . . . A writer of real skill
[An] inexplicably neglected author
Balchin has done so much to raise the standard of the popular novel
Balchin can tell an exciting story as well as any novelist alive
A little masterpiece like Nigel Balchin's The Small Back Room speaks to our own time, but with so much literary experience behind it
Balchin has the rare magnetic power that draws the human eye from one sentence to the next
A superb storyteller
The missing writer of the Forties . . . Balchin's professional skill gives a meaning to brilliance which the word doesn't usually possess