The German Ward | Pip Williams in Conversation
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The love story of the year: a breathtaking new novel from the author of global bestsellers The Dictionary of Lost Words and The Bookbinder of Jericho. A tale of love between enemies behind the lines of WW1 and the Australian artist who captures their secret.
This is a story about desire.
France, 1915. An English nurse and German doctor fall in love. He is a prisoner of war; she has never cared for rules. Their love is visceral and urgent, forbidden and doomed, and it would have gone unrecorded if not for a series of drawings found more than a century later.
At first the drawings seem insignificant, but the woman who finds them glimpses moments of intimacy and can’t look away. The images become part of a puzzle she wants to solve: who were the lovers, what became of them, and what story of war was the artist trying to tell?
In this luminous tale of hope in the midst of darkness, Pip Williams expands the world of her bestselling novels, The Dictionary of Lost Words and The Bookbinder of Jericho. Sensual and sophisticated, The German Ward shows one of Australia’s most significant writers reaching the height of her skills.
Pip Williams is the author of social research, essays, memoir, and the occasional poem, but she is best known for her companion novels, The Dictionary of Lost Words and The Bookbinder of Jericho. Since its publication in 2020, The Dictionary of Lost Words has won a number of major book awards, was chosen for the Reese Witherspoon Book Club and became a New York Times bestseller. As well as being adapted for stage, The Dictionary of Lost Words is being turned into a book concerto and has been optioned for a limited series. Pip’s second novel, The Bookbinder of Jericho, was published in 2023 and was an instant bestseller. In 2024, it won the Australian Book Industry Awards General Fiction Book of the Year and was Dymocks’ number-one book in its Top 101. Both novels were also recognised in ABC Radio National’s Top 100 Books of the 21st Century. Her upcoming novel, The German Ward, continues her exploration of love, art, and history, bringing to life a vivid World War I story of forbidden love and artistic discovery behind the lines in France. Pip’s books have been published around the world and translated into more than 30 languages.
Pip will be in conversation with Karen Brooks. Karen is the author of seventeen books, an academic of more than twenty years' experience, a newspaper columnist and social commentator, and has appeared regularly on national TV and radio. Before turning to academia, she was an army officer for five years, and prior to that dabbled in acting. She lives in Hobart, Tasmania, in a beautiful stone house with its own marvellous history. When she's not writing, she's helping her husband Stephen in his brewstillery, Captain Bligh's, or cooking for family and friends, travelling, cuddling and walking her dog, Bounty, or curled up with a great book and dreaming of more stories.
Join Pip and Karen at the Hobart Town Hall.