Book description
In the quiet cul-de-sac where Keith and Stephen live the only
immediate signs of the Second World War are the blackout at night and
a single random bombsite. But the two boys start to suspect that all
is not what it seems when one day Keith announces a disconcerting
discovery: the Germans have infiltrated his own family. And when the
secret underground world they have dreamed up emerges from the shadows
they find themselves engulfed in mysteries far deeper and more painful
than they had bargained for. 'Bernard Shaw couldn't do it, Henry James
couldn't do it, but the ingenious English author Michael Frayn does do
it: write novels and plays with equal success ... Frayn's novel
excels.' John updike, New Yorker 'Deeply satisfying . . . Frayn has
written nothing better.' Independent
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, was first performed 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.
