I am thrilled to be hosting a spot
on the THE PARTISAN by Patrick Worrall Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out
my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!
About The Book:
Author: Patrick Worrall
Pub. Date: April 25, 2023
Publisher: Union Square & Co.
Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, eBook, Audiobook
Pages: 397
Find it: Goodreads, https://books2read.com/ThePartisan
Epic in scope, The Partisan is
a thrill ride that takes readers from the hallowed halls of Cambridge to the
grimy depths of the Moscow underworld, from 1960s London to the Eastern Front
during the Second World War.
Summer 1961: The brutal Cold War between East and West is becoming ever more
perilous. Two young prodigies from either side of the Iron Curtain, Yulia and
Michael, meet at a chess tournament in London. They don't know it, but they’re
about to compete in the deadliest game ever played. Shadowing them is Greta, a
ruthless Lithuanian resistance fighter who is hunting down some of the most
dangerous men in the world. Men who are also on the radar of Vassily, perhaps
the USSR's greatest spymaster. A man of cunning and influence, Vassily is
Yulia's minder during her visit to the West, but even he could not foresee the
consequences of her meeting Michael. When the world is accelerating towards an
inevitable and catastrophic conflict, what can just four people do to prevent
it?
The Partisan playlist
Smokestack Lightning - Howlin' Wolf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMUt8KdDtTY
The Partisan is mostly set in 1961 and the soundtrack that plays in my head when I think about it is mostly rhythm and blues.
This was the era when hip English kids, like our hero Michael, were haunting record shops and drooling over precious imports from Wolf, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley...
I had the blues numbers mentioned in the book playing on a permanent loop when I was writing it. Appropriately for a story that begins at a chess tournament, most of these songs were released on Chess Records.
Smokestack Lightning, with its "slapping, compulsive beat" is the first tune Michael dances to with his Russian girl.
"In Moscow, the dance music was from Cuba and when Yulia danced it was all in the hips. It was the only way she knew how. It wasn’t quite right for rhythm and blues, but Michael did not complain because she took his hands and they went up and down the aisle next to the listening booths, dancing very close."
Bring Me My Shotgun - Lightnin' Hopkins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5bKRwZbpI4
"Shotgun" isn't a Chess side and the style here is a world away from the sharp electric blues championed by that label. It would have sounded old-fashioned even in 1961.
This song is a slow, dragging, stomping thing anchored by slithering acoustic guitar and Lightnin's voice, which seems to come up from the Land of the Dead.
It's a sour sort of lyric, written in an age before political correctness: Lightnin' is threatening to shoot his woman if she keeps fooling around with other men.
But in my head, this song belongs to the character Greta, a deadly agent of vengeance. The opening bars are what I hear whenever she comes onstage.
"Go bring me my shotgun. Yes man, and a pocketful of shells..."
Boogie In My Bones - Laurel Aitken
If he's going to keep Yulia happy on their wild night out, Michael needs to keep her dancing. Luckily, he knows a basement club in west London, then the home of the city's Jamaican diaspora, where the crowd will be bouncing all night to early ska.
This is Caribbean music with a London flavour, summed up by Laurel Aitken, a Cuban-Jamaican who made his home in England and recorded for the Blue Beat label. It would have been a blast of pure joy and freedom for any visitor from the Soviet Union.
"Yulia had never heard music from the West Indies before, but it did not matter because it was literally irresistible: you could not listen to it and stand still."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vslWAiWzlbs
Once Upon a Time on a High Hill - Otava Yo
Otava Yo are a folk-rock group from Saint Petersburg whose songs are often accompanied by beautiful films set in a delightful rural Russia of the imagined past.
This is the song I had in mind when I wrote a scene close to the end of the book where Vassily, the complicated Soviet agent, is nursing a hangover after a wedding.
"It was a fine, country-style wedding, with all the old customs observed. The ransom for the bride. The bitter vodka and the kisses that sweetened it."
Perhaps this Russia never really existed, but it's what Vassily is imagining as he toasts the bride and groom and the men turning somersaults around them.
A better Russia that once was, and could be again.
The Partisan - Leonard Cohen
My book was not inspired by this famous recording - the novel now called The Partisan had an entirely different name for most of the gestation period. But I'm very happy to be associated with the song.
The French original is called La Complainte du Partisan. It is perhaps the greatest ballad commemorating the French resistance fighters who defied the Nazi occupiers.
Cohen's Mariana Trench of a voice gives it an eternal gravity and I can imagine how this tale of struggle and sacrifice would have resonated with Greta, a résistante from Lithuania.
"When they poured across the border, I was cautioned to surrender. This I could not do."
About Patrick Worrall:
Patrick
Worrall was educated in Worcestershire and King's College, Cambridge. He has
worked as a teacher in eastern Europe and Asia, a newspaper journalist, a court
reporter at the Old Bailey and the head of Channel 4 News's FactCheck
blog. The Partisan is his first novel.
Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon
Giveaway Details:
1 winner
will receive a finished copy of THE PARTISAN, US Only.
Ends May 2nd, midnight EST.
a Rafflecopter giveawayTour Schedule:
Week One:
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4/17/2023 |
Guest Post/IG Post |
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4/18/2023 |
Guest Post |
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4/19/2023 |
IG Review/TikTok Post |
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4/20/2023 |
Review |
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4/21/2023 |
Review |
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4/24/2023 |
Review |
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4/25/2023 |
IG Review/LFL Drop Pic |
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4/26/2023 |
Review/IG Post |
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4/27/2023 |
IG Review |
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4/28/2023 |
Review/IG Post |
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