William Newton

The Two Pound Tram is a novel written by William Newton. It was first published in 2003 to great acclaim and won the 2004 Society of Authors Sagittarius Prize. It sold 60,000 copies in Britain and was also successful in America and Germany.

The year is 1930 and the British are in Arabia. Ivor Willoughby, a young orientalist, embarks on an ambitious quest to find his father, an officer abroad with the British Army. In all Ivor's life, Robert has returned to England only once, bedraggled and wild-eyed with tales of As'ir, a land of sheikhs and …