'Fantastically tart and readable' Sarah Waters

'These books are clearly among the very best fiction about the Second World War. They are written with the English poise and understatement that Jane Austen raised to its highest art form' Chris Patten, The Sunday Times

'The finest fictional record of the war produced by a British writer' Anthony Burgess

In the spring of 1941, a young English couple, Guy and Harriet Pringle, arrive in Egypt as Rommel's forces slowly but surely approach Cairo across the Sahara from the west. Will the city fall? In the streets the people contemplate welcoming a new set of occupiers, while European refugees and well-heeled Anglo-Egyptians prepare to pack their bags. And at night, everyone who is anyone flocks to the city's famed hotels and seedy cabarets, seeking one last dance before the tanks roll in.

Manning describes the Pringles' ever complicated marriage and their motley group of friends and foes with a sharp eye. And the civilian world meets the military through the figure of Simon Boulderstone, a young army officer who will witness the tragedy and tension of war on the frontier at first hand.