Stateless by Elizabeth Wein - 20BOS26–13

Few books could be as intense or memorable as Wein’s award-winning Code Name Verity (2012), set in Gestapo headquarters in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. If I created my Top 10 Books of the 21st Century (there’s an idea), it would certainly be included. Stateless also features a feisty young heroine who is an aviator but it is set six years earlier in 1937.

Stella North has been chosen to represent Britain in an international flying competition for young people that promotes peace between European nations (good luck with that). At 17, she is the youngest competitor, as well as the only woman. She works at the Natural History Museum in London, partly due to her interest in birds but also to subsidize her flying. She needs to win the competition for the prize and to show that female pilots are as good as men:

Lady Frith had promised the triumphant pilot a brand new Miles Falcon aeroplane, such as won the King’s Cup air race in 1935, and five thousand pounds. That amount on its own was enough to live on comfortably for at least ten years – if I won, I could go anywhere I wanted, study anything, live in the Galapagos Islands for a year, follow migrating geese around the world – anything!

International media is following the contestants and has nicknamed Stella “the Flying English Rose” but Rose is unnerved by their interest because she has a secret – she was just three when her family fled Russia and the Bolsheviks. Although she has lived in England with relatives ever since, she is not a citizen and is, in fact, stateless, which causes her great angst and fear of discovery. Entering the Circuit of Nations Olympics of the Air does not seem the most sensible thing for someone who should be avoiding publicity but it would be a great opportunity – if she could win.

There are a few obstacles: Stella is not the most talented or experienced of the competitors, and on her first leg of the competition, flying from Salisbury to Brussels, she witnesses another plane being forced down into the English Channel. No one believes what she saw but when the final contestant never shows up in Brussels, Stella is sure there is a killer among the competitors. It turns out all the young flyers have secrets, some violent, and Stella is not the only one who is stateless. When the competition turns into a murder mystery, Stella has to decide who she can trust if she wants to stay alive.

This is a fast-paced adventure story that explores the need for friendship and belonging. Lady Frith’s goal of “uniting nations through aviation” seems naïve to readers who know war is coming, but only a year earlier Germany hosted the Summer Olympics, which Hitler used to project a peaceful, tolerant image of Germany while hiding its racial persecution and anti-Semitic policies, so she had reason to believe her event could be successful (until a murderer subverts the competition). The young pilots are wary of Sebastian, who “races for the German Reich” although the Italian who admires Mussolini seems more offensive. The competition is dramatic and Stella learns a lot about her fellow competitors as well as her own priorities as the young pilots get closer to the final leg which will anoint a winner. The historical setting and the mystery are carefully interwoven – Wein says in the afterword that she used this setting to show Europe is “clinging to the idea of peace even while war is already raging within its borders” – but Stella’s personality and ingenuity make the story uplifting instead of dire.

Title: Stateless
Author: Elizabeth Wein
Publication: Little, Brown and Co., hardcover, 2023
Genre: Historical Fiction/Suspense
Source: Personal Copy

Reading this book contributed to these challenges:

• 20 Books of Summer 2026 (so what if it’s September)

• Historical Fiction Challenge 2026

• Cloak and Dagger Reading 2026