Description

THE TOP TEN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
Winner of the August Prize for Fiction

Dazzlingly inventive, witty and mysterious: a writer pieces together the story of a young man's death in an exhilarating narrative puzzle reminiscent of the hit podcast Serial.

A young man dies in a car crash - accident or suicide? An unnamed writer with an agenda of his own sets out to piece together Samuel's story. From friends, relatives and neighbours, a portrait emerges of a loving son, reluctant bureaucrat, contrived poser, loyal friend. But who was Samuel really, and what happened to him? In filling out the contours of his existence, the writer grasps at a fundamental question: how do we account for the substance of a life?

'My books of the year [include] Jonas Hassen Khemiri's enigmatic novel' Joyce Carol Oates

Heartbreakingly sad and laugh-out-loud funny . . . Its chorus of drifters, romantics and cynics stick in the memory, each competing to tell their own truth’ Hari Kunzru

?'Unforgettable. In this non-putdownable puzzle of a story, Khemiri manages to both thrill and break your heart' Gary Shteyngart

'Khemiri's audacious and richly drawn novel pushes the boundaries of literary fiction . . . Beneath the structural pyrotechnics lies a broader story of imposition, appropriation and lack of individual agency: that of the immigrant experience' Lucy Scholes, The National