THE CERTAINTIES

From the acclaimed author of The World Before Us, a sophisticated, intensely moving new novel about the entwined fates of two very different refugees in two distinct moments: a war-torn Spanish border town in the 1940s, and a British island in the 1970s as a ship full of would-be migrants approaches shore – for fans of Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See and Michael Ondaatje's Warlight

In the 24-hours following the arrival of three mysterious travellers to Portbou, Spain, the novel's narrator contemplates his life and fate as the Gestapo closes in when he spots a young girl near his hotel; he begins to imagine what this girl's life might be like in the future, even as his own seems to be coming to an end—decades later a young woman working as a chef on a remote island rushes with her fellow islanders to help a boat of refugees floundering off shore, and past and present calamities collide

• By turns elegiac and heart-pounding, The Certainties is an humane and timely meditation on the plight of those who seek refuge, past and present, and what any one life means

• In 2018, Aislinn Hunter was selected to be a Canadian War Artist and embedded with the Canadian Army; she also campaigned (alongside PEN Canada) to have Surrey, British Columbia designated as the first International City of Refuge in Canada