For a full hour I sat at my desk and stared up at the two photographs. One by one I smoked a packet of twenty Prima cigarettes.... The earth, I felt, was beginning to shift, and the long dead were stirring. In the closing days of the twentieth century, an elderly writer wanders the streets of Vilnius, Lithuania, possessed by the need to photograph the young mothers of the city. In their faces and the faces of their children he sees the reflection of a secret that haunts him. A secret he has spent years trying to bury. In a decaying back street of the city a woman struggles to raise her family. As her son dreams of a better life she is torn between Vilnius’s twilight world of prostitution and her determination of securing hope for her children. She too is haunted by memories that rob her of sleep. In Vilnius the rubble of the Jewish ghetto lies side by side with the fallen statues of communist heroes. Through this tangled debris of past and present the story of the writer’s great love and his even greater betrayal begins to coil its way to the surface and demands to be told.

The Last Girl: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Collishaw, Stephan

Literary

St.Martin's Press

‘Stephan Collishaw takes your hand and leads you into a world of tragic beauty, inspiring strength and delicate kindness in the midst of horror’ Aiste Diržiute
Fifteen-year-old Yael is on the run. The Jewish girl seeks shelter from the Germans on the farm of the village outcast. Aleksei is mute and solitary, but as the brutal winter advances, he reluctantly takes her in and a delicate relationship develops.
As her feelings towards Aleksei change, the war intrudes and Yael is forced to join a Jewish partisan group fighting in the woods.
Torn apart and fighting for her life, The Song of the Stork is Yael's story of love, hope and survival. It is the story of one woman finding a voice as the voices around her are extinguished.
What Reviewers and Readers Say:
'An elegantly crafted, beautifully written novel about love, survival and hope against all the odds- The Song of the Stork is a reading experience to savour.' William Ryan
'At once tightly written and suspenseful, Collishaw's historical novel is a darkly compassionate fable of human endurance in absolute extremity' Stevie Davies 
'The subtle melody of The Song of the Stork caught my soul with its first notes and didn't leave me until the very last ones. Stephen Collishaw takes your hand and leads you into a world of tragic beauty, inspiring strength and delicate kindness in the midst of horror and through this journey he reminds you of the sound of hope.' Aiste Diržiute
'A harrowing novel about a Jewish girl abandoned in World War 2 and forced to fend for herself in a landscape crawling with sexual ambiguity and brutal violence. It’s a dark jewel that holds up for examination the proximity of terror and savagery to innocence and love. Yet The Song of The Stork is as much about the future as the past. Stephan Collishaw warns us how the times we live in might end up: with an oafish peasantry drunk on Brexit chasing children through the woods, just because their parents voted Remain.' Guy Kennaway
' …a masterly work of condensed fiction that synthesises the art of a great writer with the knowledge of a keen researcher who has become immersed in the first-hand sources of the period… A beautiful book that will go down as one of the classics of the literature of the anti-Nazi partisans in the forests around Vilna during the Holocaust.' David Katz
'The prose is sparse and understated and it reminded me at times of The Secret Diary of Anne Frank, which hints at the barbaric events going on in the world without ever displaying them in all their technicolour horror... The writing is hauntingly beautiful and poetic.' Madhouse Family Reviews
'It is a refreshing read that is full of so much love and hope... I really loved this book, and is one that I have already been recommending.' The Reading Lodge
'There are so many beautiful moments in the story, acts of kindness and small mercies that show human nature at its best... he gets under the skin of his characters and brings them fully to life on the page.' One More Page blog
'The Song of the Stork is a beautifully written and poignant novel about a young girl in Poland during the Second World War… a moving read about an awful period in history, which is in fact troublingly relevant in the current political climate.' A View from the Balcony blog
'Collishaw has done a fine job of balancing historical reality with the license of fiction, the grim facts of the holocaust with the poignancy of love, and through all it, he manages to offer a sense of optimism.' Words and Leaves blog

The Song of the Stork

British & Irish

Legend Press

A story of love, race, power and consequences that spans generationsThree days after arriving in Zimbabwe, Natalie discovers an abandoned newborn baby on a hill near her uncle’s farm.  Years earlier, the hill was home to the Mazowe village where Chief Tafara governed at a time of great unrest. Faced with taxation, abductions and loss of their land at the hands of the white settlers, Tafara joined forces with the neighbouring villages in what becomes the first of many uprisings. A Child Called Happiness is a beautiful and emotive work of historical fiction. This is a story of hope, resilience and reclamation, proving that the choices made by our ancestor’s can echo for many generations to come. What Reviewers and Readers Say:'Collishaw's characters are delicately created and endearingly human', Celeste Hicks'An incredibly timely book about the human upheaval in all its emotional forms,' Rosie Garthwaite‘Steeped in the beautiful smells and sounds of Zimbabwe and evidences Stephan Collishaw’s love of the country… His balanced treatment of an emotive issue will challenge and provoke many readers,’ Phillip Barclay'Deftly weaves together two stories set in different periods of Zimbabwe's history, always taking the reader with him. The vexed issue of land in Zimbabwe and who it belongs to is the common thread. Collishaw creates atmosphere and a sense of place, bringing to life the characters, the history and the politics,' Mary Harper'A gripping yet tender story, played out under a burning African sun, and shot through with thought-provoking authenticity,' Nick Brownlee

A Child Called Happiness

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Collishaw, Stephan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Collishaw, Stephan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Collishaw, Stephan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Last Girl: A Novel

The Song of the Stork

A Child Called Happiness