Winner of the 2019 Michael Gifkins Prize for an Unpublished Novel, Soldiers is a raw and empathetic portrait of young soldiers as they come of age in the chaos of war.

Breen sometimes thought sourly that Tiger Jackson would have made a good fascist. He told unreliable stories, he liked power and admiration, and he had all three military virtues- self-belief, luck, and an eye for the main chance. Despite all this, Breen liked him. Somehow it was impossible not to.

After the death of Corporal Daniel Cousins in what is apparently a training accident, a young officer, Lieutenant Breen, becomes obsessed by the case. Was Cousins murdered by one of his own?
Breen’s investigation, as well as his unanticipated love affair with a superior officer, threatens the unity of his comrades as they wait for the suffering to come in the Battle of Crete-one of the defining encounters of World War II.

Soldiers is about what happens to men who go to war. Tom Remiger’s compelling first novel tells a story of intense feeling and unforeseen experience in a strange and distant world.

Tom McLean is originally from Rotorua but now lives in the UK, where he is completing a DPhil in English literature. Tom Remiger is the name under which he writes fiction; his non-fiction and academic writing have been published in a number of journals and magazines.