High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Night Watch is a 2006 historical fiction novel by Sarah Waters. It was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize and longlisted for the 2006 Orange Prize. The novel, which is told backward through third person narrative, takes place in 1940s London during and after World War II. The storyline follows three lesbian women, one straight woman and one man, their secrets, shames and scandals that connect them despite their different experiences. In 2005, Waters received one of the highest bids ( Pds. 1,000) during an auction where a real person's name would be immortalized in one of her novels. The auction featured many notable British novelists, and the winning bidder, author Martina Cole, had a modified version of her name featured in the novel, as ambulance driver E.M. Cole.