The Glass Pearls (Faber Editions)

'This extraordinary novel had me hooked from start to finish, and left me with so much to brood on that I felt giddy ... A fascinating, morally complex, deeply unsettling read.' -Sarah Waters

'A dark and harrowing window on the past: the ending will haunt your dreams. This is a novel that should never be forgotten again.' -Janice Hallett

Nothing is more inviting to disclose your secrets than to be told by others of their own ...

London, June 1965. Karl Braun arrives as a lodger in Pimlico: hatless, with a bow-tie, greying hair, slight in build. His new neighbours are intrigued by this cultured German gentleman who works as a piano tuner; many are fellow emigres, who assume that he, like them, came to England to flee Hitler. That summer, Braun courts a woman, attends classical concerts, buys bacon, dances the twist. But as the newspapers fill with reports of the hunt for Nazi war criminals, his nightmares become increasingly worse.

'At once a wonderfully compelling noir thriller and, more significantly, an audacious and challenging act of imagination. A tremendous rediscovery.' - William Boyd