Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011

The UK number one hardback bestseller from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Line of Beauty

In the late summer of 1913, George Sawle brings the charming, aristocratic young poet Cecil Valance to his family’s modest home. The shared intimacies of this weekend link the Sawle and Valance families irrevocably, becoming legendary events in a larger story, told and interpreted in different ways over the coming century.

Throughout this richly comic history of sexual mores and literary reputation we follow the two families, in a series of widely spaced episodes, through startling changes in fortune and circumstance. An impeccably nuanced exploration of changing taste, class and social etiquette, The Stranger’s Child, written in deliciously witty and observant prose, is an enthralling novel from one of the finest writers in the English language.Vbr>
‘Elegant and erudite novel about the life and legacy of a gay war poet’–Hari Kunzru, Guardian

‘It’s elegant, seductive, enjoyable…’–Indian Express

‘An extraordinary achievement’–The Asian Age

'I’ve read The Stranger’s Child only once, and I can’t yet make up my mind about whether it is just as brilliant as its predecessor—or whether it is an even greater achievement.'—Soumya Bhattacharya, Hindustan Times‘The Stranger’s Child is a classic where memories become myths and myths are revisited and revised.’ –Financial Express