The Epistolary Novel – Letters from Abroad

Letters from abroad is an epistolary novel.

That is an academic and most would agree, pompous way to say it is a story of letters between three individuals who meet before World War II, endure it, and are left with what humanity remains afterwards.

Fundamentally, it is a story of friendship, regret, anger and trying to find oneself in the world.

I recently published the third addition of this novel; with the original six years ago. Few things have changed within the structure of the story, sans a typo or tidying up the odd page.

Yet, upon revisiting the book to do this work, I found that the novel remains a good piece of work. Writing this story was extremely challenging. Not only was it my first novel, and far from a conventional approach to telling a story; it operates within the context of a highly charged period of history. Much is happening during these years and this is reflected through the characters as they undergo their personal triumphs and tragedies.

Ensuring novel consistency is part of the ongoing process of being a writer; yet this story held the additional challenge of covering a period of history that is very popular in my own country. World War II is taught in every school in the UK and even the biggest ignoramus of history is aware that Hitler initially attempted to invade the UK before switching to a bombing campaign of terror. Most have a basic understanding of the American and Japanese conflicts. 

So it was important to get this right. Facts of history had to be upheld and events in time had to be recognised. In writing this novel, research was required on all avenues to ensure both were honoured. The novel underwent numerous revisions and editing before it was finally ready to be shared with the world.

And when that time came, I can honestly say there was nothing else to add to it. The story had been revised so extensively that I believe, then and now, that the story could not be made better.

When it came to the idea of the novel, it was almost entirely by accident. I was in Sweden, having helped my then girlfriend’s father, clear out the home of a recently deceased woman. Among her affects were opened letters, some written to England, some addressed to her husband, some sent throughout World War II and others to different parts of Sweden.

During this period of my life, two things had happened. I was firstly fresh out of university and exhausted from writing essays for my degree. Secondly, having just travelled America (my first serious stab at travel) my head was swimming with ideas. It is not co-incidentdental that every place that is covered in the story, I had been to at some time or another (excluding South Africa, which I academically covered in my studies.) I think this lends to the process of writing – that much of what we say in a novel is usually semi-biographical.

So, when I saw those empty envelopes with addresses and time stamps on them, an idea was born. What did those letters say? Who wrote them? And how many more did they send that we did not know of?

The first pages of the novel were written in that very house but it was a good few years before the novel was finished. No virgin does it right on the first try, as Hemingway phrased it, and I found myself going through the someday it’ll be finished cycles before the draft was finally ready.

In some respects, LFA might be the novel I am proudest of, because of it being my first and also the one where I truly did not know what I was doing. Writing a story has become a bit easier, owing to an understanding of the structure and what is required for good work. The novels I have released since are not historical and are essentially allegorical warnings about the world. They are not concerned with the structure of history and neither was I when I created them. Did this make them easier to write? In quite a few aspects, the answer might be yes, but then it could be a no.

I fundamentally learnt a different style to my craft that is not replicated after Letters from Abroad. Becoming economical with my story telling was important and it was not until my third novel that I revisited writing in the first person (and in Sins on a Sunday, 1st, 2nd and 3rd is covered.)

Letters from Abroad is intended to be read as a historical novel about love, death, friendship and betrayal. It is in essence, story telling of three people that, although fictional in that I created them, could have been as real as you or I. Because people of all walks of life lived through the age of war.

The novel ends quite abruptly at the end of 1949/early 1950. As with all things in a book, this is not accidental. It signals the final collapse of empire and the beginning of World War II. Readers will be aware that Cassandra Gemini is dead by the end of the story. An American woman and scholar, her death by cancer is related to her inability to recover from the bombings in Japan and the nature of chemical warfare in the nuclear age. There is no longer a place for her in the world.

Readers will further be aware that Brian vanishes from the story as Apartheid begins in South Africa, his then country of residence.  I am not here to tell you if he survived. That question is the duty of the reader to arrive at and the novelist to not share. But his absence from the remainder of the novel offers a reference to the suppression of freedoms in South Africa that started in 1948. His own character is a free spirit whilst being quintessentially English. Scholars will debate when the British Empire started to collapse but most will agree the end had come by 1945. There is no place for such a representative in the new world.

It is rare for me to discuss my own work, from a concern of being viewed as pretentious. The decision to print Letters from Abroad in its third version merited me occasion to say a few things about the story and the world in this novel.

Thank you.

Charles Andrews, April 2026. Japan.