'A fable of loss, and an often troubling meditation on fathers and sons. Matar is writing from the heart' Observer In Egypt, Nuri, a teenage boy, falls in love with Mona - the woman his father will marry. Consumed with longing, Nuri wants to get his father out of the way - to take his place in Mona's heart. But when his father disappears, Nuri regrets what he wished for. Alone, he and Mona search desperately for the man they both love. Only for Nuri to discover a silence he cannot break and unimaginable secrets his father never wanted him to know. 'Hisham Matar is a master of the evocative; he creates his effects, on the page and on our nervous system with the fewest and most telling words. I was spellbound' Ahdaf Soueif 'Haunting in every sense.

An absorbing novel that finds its eloquence in what is left unsaid and its most vivid imagery in what has been lost, possibly for ever' Sunday Times 'I was moved and very impressed' Roddy Doyle 'Each time I had to put it down I couldn't wait to get back to it' Michael Frayn.