Blog tour: Earthly Creatures

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Welcome to the blog tour for Earthly Creatures by Stevie Davies!

More about the book…

For all her life, idealistic 20-year-old bookworm Magdalena Arber has been split down the middle: veering wildly between fidelity to indoctrinated Nazi beliefs, and her father's humanist values. Then comes the summons–the Nazi War Labour Service is conscripting her into a teaching position in East Prussia. Magda is elated. It's a release from the cosy cage of childhood, and a chance to form young minds.

She enters a lush rural world of forests, lakes, and meadows where order prevails. Yet there are monstrous hands out to shape the whole continuum of earthly creatures. The Gestapo are a lurking darkness. There is bombing further East, and news of a moving Russian front. Will Alt Schönbek burn as well? Can Magda survive?

More about the author…

Stevie Davies, who comes from Morriston, Swansea, is a novelist, literary critic, biographer and historian.

She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the Academi Gymreig and Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Wales, Swansea.

My impressions…

I have read many books set during World War II over the years, and it still amazes me how some authors can write about something so horrific in such a beautiful way. Because there is no doubt that the atrocities described within these pages are distressing, but there is also no denying that the author is a wonderful wordsmith.

In Earthly Creatures, we follow young Magdalena as she spreads her wings into the world. Grown up in Nazi Germany but in a humanist family, she is torn between her perceived duty to the Fatherland and her love for her father. Being called up as a teacher in East Prussia is her chance to find her place in the world. A world she soon discovers is not quite what she thought it was.

Knowing what we know about the horrors of the war, it is easy to judge her naivety and ideals. If, however, we try to forget what we know - just for a moment - and we put ourselves in her shoes… is it at all possible that we would also have thought and acted the way she – and so many like her, in real life – thought and acted?

Three words to describe it. Thought-provoking. Emotional. Gripping.

Do I like the cover? Yes, I love it.

Have I read any other books by the same author? No, but her bibliography looks amazing.

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