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A powerful debut novel by a bright new British writer, based on a true story of wartime espionage and detention in the East End of London
It was purely by accident that I had become a traitor. Just because one day, out of curiosity, I happened to walk back from my evening rounds via the main road, and a woman named Anna Petrova crossed my path... And yet I didn't feel bitter, because now I knew that what I had been deprived of was not my freedom, but the illusion of it. The cool, self-absorbed and instantly intriguing narrator of Laura Spinney's first novel is a woman doctor living and working in the East End at the time of the outbreak of World War Two. Caught up by chance in the aftermath of a bloody riot between Fascist and Communist agitators, she finds herself strangely drawn to the woman whose injuries she treats: the mysterious Anna, whose restaurant serves the best caviar in London. But this event begins a dangerous course of action which will threaten the doctor's reserved, individualist habits, her relationship with her lover Morris, and finally her trust in human nature itself. This chilling story has all the grip and tension of a thriller, underscored with delicate observations on the moral consequences of our actions and made unforgettable by the narrator's compelling and fascinating voice.
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About Laura Spinney Laura Spinney is a writer and science journalist living in London.
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