‘The big read with the big answers. A dizzying voyage that touches on

the key issues of our time’ SUNDAY TIMES

SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2014

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SPECSAVERS NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS 2014

LONGLISTED FOR THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD 2014

Early one September morning in 2008, a man arrives, unannounced and agitated, at the home of an old friend. The friend takes a minute to place him: they have not seen each other since Zafar disappeared suddenly some years before.

Zafar has returned to make a confession of unsettling power.

Told in the quiet of a London house, in a conversation as epic as it is intimate, his story is, in many ways, the story of our century.

‘A deep and subtle storyteller’ James Wood, NEW YORKER

‘A unique work of fiction bearing witness to much that is unspeakable’ Joyce Carol Oates, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

‘The novel I’d hoped Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom would be’ Alex Preston, OBSERVER

‘An extraordinary meditation on the limits and uses of human knowledge, a heart-breaking love story and a gripping account of one man’s psychological disintegration’ OBSERVER

‘Utterly absorbing’ GUARDIAN

‘A brilliant novel’ NEW YORK TIMES