**SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025** 'A masterpiece told with virtuosic economy...
Pure brilliance from the first to the (devastating) last sentence' India Knight 'Brilliance
on every page' Samantha Harvey 'Spare visceral urgent compelling. This book doesn't f**k
around' Gary Stevenson ' So brilliant and wise on chance love sex money' David Nicholls
Through chance luck and choice one man's life takes him from a modest apartment in Hungary to
the elite society of London - in this captivating new novel about the forces that make and
break our lives Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in
Hungary. New to the town and shy he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon
becomes isolated with his neighbour - a married woman close to his mother's age - as his only
companion. As these encounters shift into a clandestine relationship István's life spirals out
of control. Years later rising through the ranks from the army to the elite circles of
London's super-rich he navigates the twenty-first century's tides of money and power. Torn
between love intimacy status and wealth his newfound riches threaten to undo him
completely. 'How do I get out of a reading slump? This is the book to do that' Rhianna
Dhillon BBC Radio 4 'A revelatory novel' Sunday Times 'So much searing insight into the
way we live now' Observer 'Refreshing illuminating and true' Financial Times 'Compelling
and elegant merciless and poignant' Tessa Hadley 'One of the year's best novels to date'
Daily Mail 'Utterly engrossing and I read it all in a day' 5* reader review 'I was hooked
and tried to read this book with any spare moment that I had' 5* reader review A 'Best Book
of 2025' in the Guardian Observer Financial Times Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail
