Two great novelists describe the effects of war. Georgina Harding’s A Painter of Silence was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2012 and is an intimate and devastating portrait of Romania during and after the Second World War. Ignorance is a mesmerising exploration of guilt, faith, desire and judgment set in war-time France from Booker-shortlisted author Michèle Roberts.  Both writers have a consummate understanding of how to be lyrical and shocking at the same time.