#6Degrees of Separation – A book chain from Kairos to The Wager

It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for 6 Degrees of Separation.

Here’s how it works: a book is chosen as a starting point by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate says: Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal or esoteric ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge. Join in by posting your own six degrees chain on your blog and adding the link in the comments section of each month’s post.   You can also check out links to posts on Twitter using the hashtag #6Degrees.

This month’s starting book is Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, trans. by Michael Hofmann, winner of the International Booker Prize 2024. As usual, it’s a book I haven’t read but the description – ‘the intimate and devastating story of the path of two lovers through the ruins of a relationship, set against the backdrop of a seismic period in European history’ – makes me think it might be a book I’d enjoy.

Links from each title in the chain will take you to my review or the book description on Goodreads.

The two main characters in Kairos meet on a bus in Berlin in 1986.  Staying with that mode of transport, in The Girl at the Back of the Bus by Suzette D. Harrison the famous act of defiance by Rosa Parks inspires three generations of black women to take control of their lives and fight the discrimination they face.

A young woman on a bus also features on the cover of A Complicated Matter by Anne Youngson.  Set in 1939, it tells the story of Rose Dunbar who is evacuated from her home on the island of Gibraltar to London.

More evacuees in The Last Lifeboat by Hazel Gaynor which tells the story of schoolteacher Alice King who volunteers to escort a group of British children being evacuated to Canada from WW2 Britain. When their boat is sunk by a German U-boat, a small group find themselves adrift in a lifeboat on the Atlantic Ocean.

In How To Be Brave by Louise Beech, a woman and her daughter, who has been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, find comfort in learning the wartime story of an ancestor who survived for fifty days in a lifeboat after his ship was sunk.

The Night Ship by Jess Kidd tells the story of a young girl, one of the passengers aboard the Dutch ship Batavia, which was wrecked on a small island off the coast of Western Australia in 1629.

Staying with shipwrecks, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann is the true story of the British vessel, HMS Wager, which was wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia in 1741 while on a secret mission to raid a Spanish treasure-filled galleon.

My transport related chain has taken me from Berlin to Patagonia. Where did your chain take you this month?