A Lonely Man

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?

'A Lonely Man is a remarkable debut; an accomplished and intricately plotted story that manages to be both thrilling and deeply considered.' – Jon McGregor

'A delicate snare of a novel, and by the time you realize that the characters are trapped in a lethal game, you are also trapped and powerless to resist its hold.' – Brandon Taylor

'A taut, graceful literary thriller, in which domesticity is as riveting as the threat of criminal entanglement.' – Megan Hunter

'A Lonely Man entrances with its ingenious structure, haunting mood of paranoia and intrigue, and games of literature and violence played out in a seductively rendered Berlin. I savoured every page.' – Rob Doyle

'One of those rare books that’s as entertaining as it is perceptive, a page-turner with exacting syntax and emotional heft.' – Catherine Lacey

'A tense and taut work that’s utterly European, and all the better for it.’ – Benjamin Myers