A true modern classic, THE SMALL BACK ROOM is a towering novel of the Second World War.

Sammy Rice is a weapons scientist, one of the 'back room boys' of the Second World War. A crippling disability has left him cynical and disillusioned - he struggles with a drink problem at home, and politics and petty pride at work. Worse still, he fears he is not good enough for the woman he loves.

The stakes are raised when the enemy begin to drop a new type of booby-trapped bomb, causing many casualties. Only Sammy has the know-how to diffuse it - but as he comes face to face with real danger, all his old inadequacies return to haunt him.

Can he, at last, prove his worth and put his demons to rest?

"The missing writer of the Forties . . . Balchin's professional skill gives a meaning to brilliance which the word doesn't usually possess" - NEW REVIEW

"[An] inexplicably neglected author" - THE TIMES

"Balchin writes about timeless things, the places in the heart" - SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

"A remarkable storyteller" - DAILY MAIL

"A brilliant novelist . . . A writer of real skill" - NEW STATESMAN

"He tells a story gloriously" - DAILY TELEGRAPH

"Balchin has the rare magnetic power that draws the human eye from one sentence to the next" - EVENING STANDARD

"Probably no other novelist of Mr. Balchin's value is so eminently and enjoyably readable . . . [He] never lets the reader down" - TATLER

"Balchin has done so much to raise the standard of the popular novel" - TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

"A superb storyteller" - SUNDAY TIMES

"Balchin can tell an exciting story as well as any novelist alive" - SUNDAY CHRONICLE

"The novelist of men at work" - GUARDIAN

"He can always be relied on to give us the set-up magnificently" - BBC

"Perhaps the most successful British author to emerge during the war" - SATURDAY EVENING POST