Seven Lies

Description

A superb second novel looking at the nature of deceit and desire.'A master at ensnaring the reader... Intense, powerful and superbly crafted' - The Times **LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE**Stefan Vogel, a young man growing up in the former East Germany, longs for love, glory and freedom - yearnings that express themselves in a lifelong fantasy of going to America. The hopeless son of an ambitious mother and a kind but unlucky diplomat, Stefan lurches between his budding, covert interests - girls and Romantic poetry - to find himself embroiled in dissident politics, which oddly seems to offer both.In time, by a series of blackly comic and increasingly dangerous manoeuvres, he contrives to make his fantasy come true, finding himself not only in the country of his dreams, but also married to the woman he idolises. America seems everything he expected and meanwhile his secrets are safely locked away behind the Berlin Wall.A new life of unbounded bliss seems to have been granted to him. And then that life begins to fall apart...

James Lasdun's books include The Horned Man and Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked. He teaches creative writing at Columbia University and reviews regularly for the Guardian. His work has been filmed by Bernardo Bertolucci (Besieged) and he co-wrote the films Sunday, which won Best Feature and Best Screenplay awards at Sundance, and Signs and Wonders, starring Charlotte Rampling and Stellan Skarsgard.

A riveting, thrillerish plot. Here is a stylist who's also a fabulous storyteller... A treat * Daily Telegraph * An elegant, moving and intelligent book * Irish Times * Gripping and beautifully written * Scotsman * Grips the reader from the start... Lean, artful, assured * Spectator * James Lasdun is a tremendous writer and Seven Lies is that rare thing, a novel that delivers on every level. It is so gripping that you want to gobble it down at a single sitting, and yet the prose is so exacting that you want to linger over every sentence -- Geoff Dyer