Owen Sheers
Born on the 20th of September, 1974, in Suva, Fiji, but brought up in Abergavenny in Wales, Sheers went to the King Henry VIII school before studying further at New College in Oxford and the University of East Anglia.
Sheers is primarily a poet, first releasing a collection of poems in 2000 called ‘The Blue Book’, which was later followed by a work of prose in 2004 called ‘The Dust Diaries’. In between, he worked in TV as a researcher. He then released a second volume of poems in 2005 called Skirrid Hill as well as a play called Unicorns.
Sheers then released his first novel, Resistance, in 2007 and it was quickly shortlisted for various prizes and eventually had a film made for it, which Sheers himself co-wrote.
Since then, Sheers has involved himself in the publishing of a number of works, from plays such as The Two Worlds of Charlie F in 2012 to verse dramas such as Pink Mist in 2014. His other novel, I Saw A Man, was then published in 2015.
Resistance
Resistance is a 2007 alternative history novel by Welsh poet and author Owen Sheers. The plot centres on the inhabitants of a valley near Abergavenny in Wales in 1944–45, shortly after the failure of Operation Overlord and a successful German counter invasion of Great Britain.
A group of German Wehrmacht soldiers stay there after men leave to serve in the covert British Resistance. The novel follows abandoned farmer’s wife Sarah Lewis and German commanding officer Albrecht Wolfram, as they form an unlikely relationship in spite of their backgrounds and political standings.