Book description
'A knife-edge thriller/farce about a missing Bruegel masterpiece
and its rightful custodians.' Independent Martin Clay, a young
would-be art historian, suddenly sees opening in front of him the
chance of a lifetime: the opportunity to perform a great public
service, and at the same time to make his professional reputation -
perhaps even rather a lot of money as well. Thus he finds himself
drawn step by step into a moral and intellectual labyrinth.
Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933 and began his career as a
journalist on the Guardian and the Observer. His plays include
Alphabetical Order, Clouds, Donkeys Years, Make or Break and
Benefactors. Noises Off won the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy
of the Year and the Laurence Olivier Best Comedy of the Year. His more
recent plays include Copenhagen, which won the 1998 Evening Standard
Award for Best Play of the Year and the 2000 Tony Award for Best Play
(USA), and Democracy, which opened to great critical acclaim in 2003.
His latest play, Afterlife, opened in 2008. He has also translated a
number of works from Russian, including plays by Chekhov and Tolstoy.
His films for television include First and Last (1989), for which he won
an Emmy, and an adaptation of his 1991 novel A Landing on the Sun. His
novels include Headlong (1999), which was shortlisted for the Booker
Prize, and Spies (2002), which won the Whitbread Novel Award. He is
married to the biographer and critic Claire Tomalin.
