Reading Group Guide Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd

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Reading Group Guide

Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd

In Brief

A thrilling, plot-twisting new novel set in Europe during the First World War, from the bestselling author of Any Human Heart, Restless and Ordinary Thunderstorms.

In Detail

Vienna, 1913. Lysander Rief, a young English actor, walks through the city to his first appointment with eminent psychiatrist, Dr Bensimon. Sitting in the waiting room he is anxiously pondering the particularly intimate nature of his neurosis when a young woman enters. Lysander is immediately drawn to her strange, hazel eyes and her unusual, intense beauty. Her name is Hettie Bull. Their subsequent affair is both passionate and particularly destructive. Moving from Vienna to London's West End, from the battlefields of France to hotel rooms in Geneva, Waiting for Sunrise is a feverish and mesmerising journey into the human psyche, a beautifully observed portrait of wartime Europe, a plot-twisting thriller and a literary tour de force.

About the Author

William Boyd is the author of ten novels, including A Good Man in Africa, winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Award; An Ice-Cream War, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Brazzaville Beach, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Any Human Heart, winner of the Prix Jean Monnet and adapted into a Channel 4 drama; Restless, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year, the Yorkshire Post Novel of the Year and a Richard & Judy selection, and most recently, the bestselling Ordinary Thunderstorms.

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Reading Group Guide Discussion

1. How does Dr. Bensimon’s theory of Parallelism affect our sense of truth and the accuracy of the narrative we receive from Lysander?

2. Is the re-engagement of Lysander and Blanche a story of enduring love or a reminder of the fickle loyalties and impenetrable nature of others throughout the novel?

3. Lysander notes to himself, ‘I had changed enormously, irrevocably – I was a different person.’ What shifts in identity can you see in the novel?

4. ‘He looked across the table at her and registered his absence of anger, of outrage. All he saw was a very attractive woman in fashionable clothes.’ How do you feel about the novel’s representation of male promiscuity?

5. How does the novel represent psychotherapy? Do you believe in Lysander’s recovery?

6. How does Lysander’s style of poetry develop? How does this reflect his altering mental state?

7. At the beginning of the novel Lysander goes to see Measure for Measure, a ‘strange play about lechery, purity, moral corruption and virtue’. Discuss these topics as they appear in the novel.

8. Outside of Lysander’s personal story, how does the novel represent the changing world?

9. What is the significance of the title?

10. To what extent can you sympathise with Lysander Rief?