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The Kingdom of Ashes
The Kingdom of Ashes
Dec 29, 2025 2:24 PM

Author:Robert Edric

The Kingdom of Ashes

Germany, spring 1946. The Nuremberg Trials are underway. Three hundred miles north, in the Rehstadt Institute, a British "Assessment and Evaluation" centre, Alex Foster interrogates a succession of lesser war criminals, exploring their pasts and their crimes, and deciding their futures in the soon-to-be-reborn Germany.

But Rehstadt, a town largely untouched by the war, is a place of old hostilities and burnished hatreds; a place still not entirely at peace; a place where the certainties of the past are still weighed favourably against the deprivations of the present and the vague, uncertain promises of the future.

As spring progresses, and as events in the wider world quicken to their own closely observed conclusion, Alex Foster finds himself at the centre of a conflict involving British, American and German interests; and for the first time in his career he also finds himself compromised - forced into subterfuge and deceit as he struggles to weigh personal convictions and loyalties against the greater political and military good...

Reviews

An impressive tale of love and death in wartime...much contemporary fiction seems inconsequential and fleeting by comparison

—— Guardian

Edric handles the many characters and threads of this complex novel with skill...[his] consistent brilliance is astounding

—— Literary Review

His descriptions are masterful

—— Scottish Sunday Herald

A novel of a particular time and place, but one that poses timeless questions...Very satisfying...He is at his best here

—— The Scotsman

Compelling...Edric has a flawless sense of pace, and an intuitive grasp of character

—— Sunday Times

This compelling, unsettling work brilliantly conveys the ambiguities of operating in this defeated, difficult country

—— Good Book Guide

A genius . . . Elusive, delicate but lasting

—— Alan Ayckbourn

P.G. Wodehouse is the gold standard of English wit

—— Christopher Hitchens

To dive into a Wodehouse novel is to swim in some of the most elegantly turned phrases in the English language

—— Ben Schott

Wodehouse is so utterly, properly, simply funny

—— Adele Parks

I've recorded all the Jeeves books, and I can tell you this: it's like singing Mozart. The perfection of the phrasing is a physical pleasure. I doubt if any writer in the English language has more perfect music

—— Simon Callow

Wodehouse was quite simply the Bee's Knees. And then some

—— Joseph Connolly

I constantly find myself drooling with admiration at the sublime way Wodehouse plays with the English language

—— Simon Brett

Quite simply, the master of comic writing at work

—— Jane Moore

To pick up a Wodehouse novel is to find oneself in the presence of genius - no writer has ever given me so much pure enjoyment

—— John Julius Norwich

Compulsory reading for anyone who has a pig, an aunt - or a sense of humour!

—— Lindsey Davis

The Wodehouse wit should be registered at Police HQ as a chemical weapon

—— Kathy Lette

Witty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny

—— Arabella Weir

The funniest writer ever to put words to paper

—— Hugh Laurie

The greatest comic writer ever

—— Douglas Adams

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

—— Sebastian Faulks

Sublime comic genius

—— Ben Elton

You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour

—— Stephen Fry

The Everyman edition promises to be a splendid celebration of the divine Plum

—— The Independent

The handsome bindings are only the cherry on top of what is already a cake without compare

—— Evening Standard

You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour

—— Stephen Fry
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