Alison MacLeod speaks with a soft English accent. She lives in Brighton, England, where she teaches contemporary fiction at the University of Chichester in West Sussex. But in her heart, she’s still a Nova Scotian. The author, who grew up in Halifax, was longlisted for the prestigious Man Booker Prize for Unexploded, her tale of a family on the south coast of England in 1940 living in fear of a German invasion.