Her characters have included the 12-year-old daughter of an SS officer in 1945, a Polish seasonal worker on a German asparagus farm after the fall of the iron curtain, and – most recently – a young Ukrainian man faced with the choice between resistance and collaboration during the Nazi occupation. Seiffert’s subject is ordinary lives in extraordinary times. Her books have been published in eighteen languages.

Her second novel, Afterwards (2007) third novel The Walk Home (2014), and fourth novel A Boy in Winter (2017), were all longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Field Study, her collection of short stories published in 2004, received an award from PEN International. In 2003, she was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists, and in 2011 she received the EM Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her first book, The Dark Room, (2001) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and made into the feature film Lore. Seiffert’s subject is ordinary lives in extraordinary times Rachel Seiffert is one of Virago’s most critically acclaimed contemporary novelists. Rachel Seiffert is one of Virago’s most critically acclaimed contemporary novelists.

The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert