Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction
Shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize

'Brilliantly done . . . the period detail never overwhelms the simple, passionate human story. It's a tour-de-force of hints, clues and dropped threads' Suzi Feay, Independent on Sunday

Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked out streets, illicit liaisons, sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch is the work of a truly brilliant and compelling storyteller.
This is the story of four Londoners - three women and a young man with a past, drawn with absolute truth and intimacy. Kay, who drove an ambulance during the war and lived life at full throttle, now dresses in mannish clothes and wanders the streets with a restless hunger, searching . . . Helen, clever, sweet, much-loved, harbours a painful secret . . . Viv, glamour girl, is stubbornly, even foolishly loyal, to her soldier lover . . . Duncan, an apparent innocent, has had his own demons to fight during the war. Their lives, and their secrets connect in sometimes startling ways. War leads to strange alliances . . .

Tender, tragic and beautifully poignant, set against the backdrop of feats of heroism both epic and ordinary, here is a novel of relationships that offers up subtle surprises and twists. The Night Watch is thrilling. A towering achievement.

* Ongoing author PR activity to include media interviews, events and appearances at literary festivals * Extensive nationwide advertising campaign * Reviews and feature coverage * Key title for trade promotions * Reading copies available

About the Author
Sarah Waters, who was born in Wales, has been described as 'one of the best storytellers alive today' (Matt Thorne, Independent), and there can be no doubt that readers and critics alike have been gripped by her extraordinary imagination. Sarah Waters' first novel, Tipping the Velvet, won a Betty Trask Award, and was shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Her next novel, Affinity, won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award while Fingersmith and The Night Watch were both shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. The former also won the CWA Ellis Peters Dagger Award for Historical Crime Fiction and the South Bank Show Award for Literature. The Little Stranger was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2009 and The Paying Guests was shortlisted for the Baileys Prize in 2015. Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, Fingersmith and The Night Watch have all been adapted for television, The Little Stranger was adapted as a film by Lenny Abrahamson, and Fingersmith inspired Park Chan-wook's film, The Handmaiden. Sarah Waters has been named Author of the Year five times: by the British Book Awards, The Booksellers' Association, Waterstone's Booksellers, Glamour Magazine Awards and the Stonewall Awards. In 2019 she was awarded an OBE for services to literature.

Reviews
A triumph... the topsy-turvy time scheme is an elegant and profound device which imbues much of the novel with a poignant dramatic irony and turns every incident, however humdrum, into a revelation that helps to illuminate how her characters became the people they are... [a] finely nuanced, wise and generous novel... Waters is an author to cherish, and this is probably her finest achievement yet -- Justine Jordan * Guardian *
Sharply and compassionately observed, richly coloured and compelling to read * Independent *
A truthful, lovely book that needs no conjuring tricks to make you want to read it again -- Philip Hensher * Observer *
Brilliantly done... the period detail never overwhelms the simple, passionate human story. It's a tour-de-force of hints, clues and dropped threads -- Suzi Feay * Independent on Sunday *
This outstandingly gifted novelist releases her imagination into her most compelling depiction yet -- Peter Kemp * Sunday Times *
She produces terrific narrative tension, whether in a mad ambulance ride through the bombs or in loving someone other than the one you're with * Daily Mail *
Beautifully written, deeply moving and utterly engrossing * Elle *
Burns with a slow but scorching intensity... Sarah Waters is a great writer -- Mark Bostridge * Independent on Sunday *
Waters' "bomb story" does not at all read like a piece of period fiction. It reads as utterly new and fresh and urgent, both in what it says and the way it says it. It's a work of great beauty and authority and sympathetic imagination -- Jenny Turner * London Review of Books *
The Night Watch leaves you with the sense of having read something rich and complex pared down with consummate skill by a first-class storyteller into a series of deceptively simple tales of love. Which is a fancy way of saying that Sarah Waters' latest offering lingers on, long after the final page and its first, most fateful meeting -- Melanie McGrath * Evening Standard *
The trick, as her fans have realised, is to relax, to let yourself be caught up in the current of her story and bob along breathless to the end -- Mary Wakefield * Sunday Telegraph *
A natural storyteller, Waters also has the most extraordinary ear, the writerly equivalent of perfect pitch * Time Out *
A beautifully crafted novel. Full of subtle twists, this tender tale will delight Waters' many existing fans, while winning her a whole raft of new ones -- Lianne Kolirin * Express *
Four years after Fingersmith, Sarah Waters exchanges rustling petticoats for ration books in a slow-burning, masterly saga of the second world war * Guardian *
The twist in The Night Watch is Waters' accomplished structure . . . Waters is an all-rounder, and this novel shows off her talents beautifully -- Lucy Beresford * Literary Review *
Lives come together, intertwine and unravel like a kind of war-effort knitting . . . On reaching the end of the novel, it is impossible not to start anxiously again at the beginning. But this neither helps nor comforts. The Night Watch stays bleakly in the mind long after its re-reading, underlining the growing authority of its author -- Carol Ann Duffy * Daily Telegraph *
Waters takes us back in time, gradually sifting through these lives like an archaeologist on a dig trying to reconstruct the past. It's a clever device, efficiently accomplished, intriguing the reader so that you find yourself turning the pages as if in a thriller, your mind racing to solve the puzzles that Waters has devised -- Kate Chisholm * Spectator *
Steeped in pungent, evocative detail and littered with sad little emotional truths, it's also impossible to put down -- Claire Allfree * Metro *
There is much to give any reader pure pleasure. The text is saturated in period detail: the ration books, the wireless, the black out, the ARPs, silk pyjamas, Max Factor inches thick, Bakelite light-bulb holders, wartime bureaucracy and typist pools. The dialogue is terrific -- Patricia Duncker * New Statesman *
Compelling... A writer whose talent for charting social and political intricacies is matched by her delicate feel for the nuances of erotic attachment... Waters's attention to detail is impressive, particularly when she's conveying the atmosphere of wartime London * New York Times *
Flawless... A sophisticated, beautifully written novel * Washington Post *
A wonderful novel... Waters is almost Dickensian in her wealth of description and depth of character * Chicago Tribune *
Waters has the gift of story, the ability to dissolve the distance between reader and subject until nothing but experience remains * Los Angeles Times *
Compelling... sexually and psychologically provocative * USA Today *
Masterful * Seattle Times *


Awards
Winner of Stonewall Writer of the Year 2006 (UK). Short-listed for Man Booker Prize 2006 (UK) and Orange Prize 2006 (UK) and Nibbies 2007 (UK) and James Tait Black Memorial Prize 2007 (UK).



Book Information
ISBN 9781844082414
Author Sarah Waters
Format Paperback
Page Count 512
Imprint Virago Press Ltd
Publisher Little, Brown Book Group
Weight(grams) 400g
Dimensions(mm) 196mm * 126mm * 36mm