“Someone rang my husband. Your wife is not well, the person said. Your wife is not well.”

When Clara’s parents transplant her from Paris to New York at the age of sixteen, a fleeting encounter with a young man seems, for a brief period, to open up new possibilities. As she strives to fulfil her vocation as a writer, and as she struggles in later years with the cumulative constraints of an unhappy marriage, Clara’s imagination is strangely haunted by a life that might have been.

Tracing Clara’s story from her adolescence to her experience of motherhood, and then through to a pivotal bid for freedom, Two Hours is an exceptional novel. Witty, perceptive, and profoundly humane, this is the work of a writer at the height of her powers.

"Covering almost 40 years in 160 pages, it has scope and precision. . . So intensely delivered that I had to set the book down to take a breath." - The Guardian

"Thrilling as any romance." - The Independent (UK)

"Alba Arikha successfully captures the violent tension of being at the threshold of adulthood and yearning for a freedom that is just out of reach." - Times Literary Supplement

"Arikha inhabits Clara with such emotional authenticity…that when she makes her final bid for freedom you’ll want to hold her hand and run." - Daily Mail

"Two Hours is a work of chiaroscuro. An intricate portrait of a woman's life captured in fleeting bursts of memory. Fragments of light and shadow. In a series of artfully woven moments, Arikha tells a story that lingers beyond the margins and will linger with the reader long after its conclusion.
​" - The Lincoln Review

"Fascinating. . .[The] prose is wonderful, and the way that she writes about relationships is really moving" - Air Mail Podcast