Product Description

Rich or poor, five people, seemingly very different, find their lives in the capital connected in undreamed-of ways. There is Job, the illegal mini-cab driver whose wife in Zimbabwe no longer answers his letters; Ian, the idealistic supply teacher in exile from South Africa; Katie from New York, jilted and miserable as a dogsbody at a political magazine, and fifteen-year-old Anna, trafficked into sexual slavery. Polly Noble, an overworked human rights lawyer, knows better than most how easy it is to fall through the cracks into the abyss. Yet when her au pair, Iryna, disappears, Polly's own needs and beliefs drag her family into a world of danger, deceit and terror. Riveting, humane, engaging, HEARTS AND MINDS is a novel that is both entertaining and prepared to ask the most serious questions about the way we live.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #261021 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 432 pages

Review
'This is a novel written with passion and moral outrage. It is a vivid portrait of a city that is at once familiar and disconcertingly strange' --THE TIMES Joan Smith

Review
'She is a humane writer as well a waspish one and it is the plight of London's migrant workers and sink-school pupils with which she is primarily concerned here, and her passion and care are affecting'

Review
'There is much in HEARTS AND MINDS to praise . . . The book displays the author's relentless compassion. A large kindness overarches the novel'

Customer Reviews

A Deeply Affective Book
This is Amanda Craig's(who is also an Amazon Top 100
reviewer)sixth novel,and her most accomplished and
adventurous to date.Set in London,it is part thriller,
part social commentary,and begins with a female body
being dumped into a pond on Hampstead Heath.
The dead woman is an illegal immigrant,and the novel
criss-crosses between the often harrowing experiences
of 5 immigrants .London is portrayed as not coming to
terms with multi-culturalism,whilst many of it's institutions
are in a state of decay.Meanwhile many of the 'chattering'
class are self-obsessed and selfish. This is a deeply affective,
moral and compassionate book that makes one ponder what we
owe other people and the benefits of human kindness.

Wise and entertaining
I admired this book enormously - for its wisdom and humanity first and foremost, but also for the power and grace of Amanda Craig's storytelling. Through an adept orchestration of a wide cast of diverse characters - prostitutes, magazine writers, immigrant taxi-drivers and fundamentalist teenagers - Craig's protrayal of Britain today is as subtle and complex as the problems it faces. I didn't really want the novel to end - but when it did, I felt wiser. But sadder too, because although there are many comic moments, Craig's depiction of London, warts and all, is depressingly accurate.

page-turner with a heart - and a brain
Hearts and Minds begins with a murder, and around this central mystery Amanda Craig has woven a riveting novel about five very different characters whose lives intersect in all sorts of interesting and unexpected ways. It's as gripping as the best crime novels, but it's much more than that - it's about big themes: what makes us human, what divides us, and what can drive ordinary people to acts of great cruelty or great courage. The setting is a thoroughly contemporary London, described in all its beauty and squalor, in which trafficked sex-slaves and asylum seekers endure a hellish existence alongside the largely oblivious middle-classes, whose comforts are sometimes bought at the expense of an invisible underclass. The satire is well-aimed, sharp and often very funny without being spiteful, and the plot developments come thick and fast as the strands are drawn together in a dramatic denouement. Although at times the portrait of urban life is very dark, the novel's good samaritans shine brightly and it is they who are given the last word. Highly recommended.