"Palliser's novel shares some superficial similarities with last year's Booker winner, Prophet Song - a family in crisis navigating an authoritarian regime - but is a more well developed and satisfying work." --The Guardian

Set in Eastern Europe during the Second World War. When his nation is invaded and occupied by a brutal enemy, a well-intentioned man persuades his wife that they should give temporary shelter to a young girl who is at school with their daughter. He has no idea that the girl belongs to a community against whom the invader intends to commit genocide. Days stretch into weeks and then months while the enemy's pitiless hatred of the girl's community puts all of the family in danger. Nobody outside the family can be trusted with the dangerous secret and the threat from outside unlocks a darkness that threatens to derail them all. From the internationally bestselling author of The Quincunx (over a million copies sold worldwide), comes a deeply unsettling psychological novel about the hideous decisions that people are forced to make when living under tyrannical regimes.