Justin Cartwright's novels include the Booker-shortlisted In Every Face I Meet, the Whitbread Novel Award-winner Leading the Cheers and the acclaimed White Lightning, shortlisted for the 2002 Whitbread Novel Award. His previous novel, The Promise of Happiness, won the 2005 Hawthornden Prize. Justin Cartwright was born in South Africa and lives in London.
On 20 July 1944, Adolf Hitler narrowly escaped an assassin's bomb. Axel von Gottberg and his conspirators were hunted down and hanged from meat-hooks, and the executions filmed. Sixty years later, Conrad Senior is left a legacy of papers by von Gottberg's close friend, the legendary Oxford professor Elya Mendel, and becomes obsessed with what they reveal and finding the brutal film. Award-winning writer Justin Cartwright has conjured a masterwork that addresses the nature of friendship and what it means to be human, and it is a remarkable tapestry of passion, ideas, frailty and courage.
'A profound exploration of guilt, friendship, voyeurism and morality. A cracker'
'With inexorable tenderness Cartwright weaves his narrative threads into a fabric of beautiful complexity ... heart-stopping ... a novel that is deeply serious and utterly accomplished'
'A richly detailed evocation of one of the darkest periods in modern history, and an eloquent exploration of human fallibility and guilt'
A stunning new novel from the author of The Promise of Happiness
