A Lonely Man

A New Statesman Book of the Year 2021

A Metro Book of the Year 2021

A Washington Post '10 Best Thriller and Mystery Books of 2021'



'A taut, subtle, postmodern literary thriller.' SUNDAY TIMES

'A remarkable debut; an accomplished and intricately plotted story.'-JON McGREGOR

'A Lonely Man is a delicate snare of a novel.'-BRANDON TAYLOR

'A thrilling, unnerving novel. a page-turner with exacting syntax and emotional heft.'-CATHERINE LACEY

'Impressively deft. A Lonely Man is a tense and taut work.'-BENJAMIN MYERS

'A classy page-turner.' MAIL ON SUNDAY

Robert is a struggling writer living in Berlin with his wife and two young daughters. One night he meets Patrick, an enigmatic stranger with a sensational story to tell: a ghostwriter for a Russian oligarch - recently found hanged - who is now being followed. But is he really in danger? Patrick's life strikes Robert as a fabrication, but one that comes to obsess him. He decides to use the other man, and his story.

An elegant and atmospheric twist on the cat-and-mouse narrative, A Lonely Man is a novel of shadows, of the search for identity and the elastic nature of truth. As his association with Patrick hurtles towards tragedy, Robert must decide: are actual events the only things that give a story life, and are some stories too dangerous to tell?