These Days

WINNER OF THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION WINNER OF THE E. M. FORSTER AWARD AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4s BOOK AT BEDTIME Two sisters. Four nights. One City. April, 1941. Belfast has escaped the worst of the war - so far. Following the lives of sisters Emma and Audrey - one engaged to be married, the other in a secret relationship with another woman - as they try to survive the horrors of the Belfast Blitz, These Days is an unforgettable novel about lives lived under duress, about family, and about how we try to stay true to ourselves 'Brilliantly evokes wartime love and heartbreak.' Guardian 'Breathtakingly good. A novel of enormous heart; full of luminous passages of prose.' Observer 'Meticulously researched, perfectly imagined, full of compassion and emotional truth.' CLARE CHAMBERS

Lucy Caldwell was born in Belfast in 1981. She is the author of four novels, several stage plays and radio dramas, and two collections of short stories: Multitudes and Intimacies. She won the BBC National Short Story Award in 2021 for 'All the People Were Mean and Bad'. Other awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the George Devine Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize and a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018 and in 2019 she was the editor of Being Various - New Irish Short Stories.