In his debut novel, ‘The Poet Laurie Ate’, author Ash James tells the stories of his grandfather, a village policeman who served as a civilian plain-clothes military policeman in Cairo during WW1.
In the novel Mr James’ grandfather, who routinely kept the peace in his village before enlisting for the army in Worcester, morphs into a man thousands of miles away from his loved ones performing a seemingly impossible task.
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In the book he grapples with espionage and deceit in war-torn Egypt with the help of his military colleague.
Mr James said: “I began to find evidence of my Grandad’s exploits in Cairo in WW1 while checking old documents, post cards and medals he had passed down.
“The more I dug, the more apparent it became that Grandad, a village policeman, had played something of a civilian plain-clothes military police role in this huge Arabic city.”
Mr James added: “This was the inspiration behind my novel as I decided to portray an under-represented period and place, Cairo in 1917, through the eyes of those most acutely involved.
“My aim was to show this through an exciting action story, involving subterfuge, entitlement, and the struggle to be heard.”
“The Poet that Laurie ate reveals through the characters the parallels between then and now, asking the question – have we really learnt?”.
