The Nick of Time

Description

`A book dealing with modern problems and rightly longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. King is a writer's writer, his voice utterly convincing' Beryl Bainbridge, Books of the Year, Daily Telegraph Francis King's provocative and adventurous novel looks at the havoc wrought when a young Kosovan - an illegal immigrant - finds himself in London. Mehmet leads a double life befriending and lodging with an elderly woman who suffers from MS, while at the same time having an affair with a female doctor and throwing himself onto the London gay scene. Disaster looms when he begins a relationship with a gay protector - and is arrested because of his illegal status.

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

'Very much of here and now ... entirely persuasive' Penelope Lively, The Spectator 'I loved The Nick of Time, very enjoyable and subversive, with a highly engaging hero whose bad behaviour made compulsive reading - his exploits were most entertaining' Margaret Drabble 'King's skill is such that, though one senses from early on that Mehmet is totally untrustworthy, the hypnotism of his charm is convincing' Anthony Thwaite, Sunday Telegraph 'An up-to-the-minute thriller centred on the fortunes and misfortunes of a handsome illegal immigrant ... and beautifully written' Antonia Fraser, Books of the Year, Mail on Sunday