Question Of Loyalties

by Allan Massie

Widely acclaimed as Allan Massie’s finest novel, explores the complexities of loyalty, nationality, and family legacy after the horrors of World War II. Rife with the anguish of hindsight and the irony of circumstance, this powerful book is “addictively narrated . . . Out of one broken man’s story evolves the weighty history and treachery of a whole era” ( ). Etienne de Balafré, half French, half English, and raised in South Africa, returns to postwar France to unravel the tangled history of his father. Was Lucien de Balafré a patriot who served his country as best he could in difficult times, or a treacherous collaborator in the Vichy government?

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, World War II, France, Book Club, Literary Fiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published November 15, 1989

About the author

Allan Massie was a Scottish journalist, sports writer and novelist. He was one of Scotland's most prolific and well-known journalists, writing regular columns for The Scotsman, The Sunday Times (Scotland) and the Scottish Daily Mail. He was the author of nearly 30 books, including 20 novels. He is notable for novels set in the distant past and Vichy France.