by Christopher Priest – 2002

Reviewers describe The Separation as both brilliant and confusing, so get ready for a literary puzzle if you dive into this one.

Researching the war between Britain and Nazi Germany, which ended in May 1941, historian Stuart Gratton becomes intrigued by the enigma of J. L. Sawyer, an obscure figure who played a key part in bringing the conflict to its conclusion. As he digs deeper, he discovers there were two J. L. Sawyers—identical twins Jack and Joe, one a bomber pilot and the other a conscientious objector. They are divided both by their love for the same woman and their attitudes towards the war. But as the brothers’ story emerges from books, letters, and diaries, the evidence does not all add up, and there may be an even wider separation between them: divergent realities, in which different possibilities and unexpected truths emerge, and nothing is quite what it seems.