England, the end of the 90s. Two brothers—Alex and Larry—meet at their mother’s house, where they haven’t been for many years. The first is a writer and translator, the second is an athlete and film actor. The shadow of the past casts a gloom over their complicated relationship. The novel’s action moves from country to country, from era to era, from person to person. One of the subtlest stylists of our time, Andrew Miller, skillfully combines layers of history in his novel, shining a kind of X-ray on the dark sides of the present through the past. The novel rightly made it onto the Booker Prize shortlist for 2001.