The Waves Behind the Boat

Description

In a remote corner of Japan an Englishwoman is drowned by a freak tidal wave. Bill, a young university lecturer, and his wife Mary are asked by the Consul to identify the body. On their arrival in the seaside village they are met - and befriended - by Bibi Akulov, the immensely rich White Russian in whose house the dead woman was staying. For the English couple it is the start of a complex and unnerving relationship with Bibi and her mysterious brother Sasha - a relationship which reveals the darker side of the Akulov household, and involves Mary in an increasingly brutal exploration of her own secret nature.

Born in Switzerland, Francis King spent his childhood in India, where his father was a government official. While still an undergraduate at Oxford he published his first three novels. He then joined the British Council, working in Italy, Greece, Egypt, Finland and Japan, before he resigned to devote himself entirely to writing. For some years he was drama critic for the Sunday Telegraph and he reviewed fiction regularly for the Spectator. He won the Somerset Maugham Prize,the Katherine Mansfield Prize and the Yorkshire Post Novel of the Year Award for Act of Darkness (1983). His penultimate book, The Nick of Time, was long-listed for the 2003 Man Booker Prize. Francis King died in 2011. "One of our great writers, of the calibre of Graham Greene and Nabokov." Beryl Bainbridge

'Mr King seems unable to write badly' Observer 'Few English novelists have written with more insight and assurance of life in Japan ... The Waves Behind the Boat is one of this best books.' David Rees, Spectator 'The narration shimmers with sensual awareness ... as though Maugham had collaborated with Colette.' Irish Times