An enthralling novel of war, love and loss from the author of Birdsong and A Week in December . Having accepted a strange but intriguing invitation to a small island off the coast of France, psychiatrist Robert Hendricks meets the man who has commissioned him to write a biography, a man more interested in dredging up Robert's past than he is in revealing his own. Confronted suddenly with years of denying the reality of war and the loss he experienced as a soldier, Robert is overcome with memories, unsure which of them, if any, he can trust. Moving between the present and the past and casting a long, baleful light over the best and the worst of the last hundred years, this powerful story is compelling and full of suspense, offering up a tender, brutal portrait of a man and a century, exploring whether a person after tragedy can ever be the same.