'Brilliance on every page' Samantha Harvey 'Spare, visceral, urgent, compelling. This book doesn't f**k around' Gary Stevenson ?So brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money' David Nicholls ?How do I get out of a reading slump? This is the book to do that? Rhianna Dhillon, BBC Radio 4 Through chance, luck and choice, one man?s life takes him from a modest apartment in Hungary to the elite society of London ? in this captivating new novel about the forces that make and break our lives *A summer reading pick in the Guardian, Financial Times, Sunday Times, Daily Mail* Fifteen-year-old Istv?n lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour ? a married woman close to his mother?s age ? as his only companion. As these encounters shift into a clandestine relationship, Istv?n?s life spirals out of control. Years later, rising through the ranks from the army to the elite circles of London's super-rich, he navigates the twenty-first century's tides of money and power. Torn between love, intimacy, status, and wealth, his newfound riches threaten to undo him completely.