Een verleidelijke, intrigerende psychologische roman over man-vrouwrelaties.
Een man en een vrouw raken tijdens een feestje op een zomerse dag aan de praat. Vrijwel onmiddellijk zijn ze aan elkaar verslingerd en halen ze beiden hun leven overhoop, tot ze zich vragen gaan stellen. Wat weten ze van elkaar? Wat kun je echt over een ander weten? Een briljante roman over ontregeling en ontgoocheling, de botsing tussen culturen en gepolitiseerde seksualiteit.
Returning to England after the war Gilbert Joseph is treated very differently now that he is no longer in an RAF uniform. Joined by his wife Hortense, he rekindles a friendship with Queenie who takes in Jamaican lodgers. Can their dreams of a better life in England overcome the prejudice they face?
David Mitchell comes home - to England, 1982, and the cusp of adolescence. Jason Taylor is 13, doomed to be growing up in the most boring family in the deadest village ("Black Swan Green") in the dullest county (Worcestershire) in the most tedious nation (England) on earth. And he stammers. 13 chapters, each as self-contained as a short story, follow 13 months in his life as he negotiates the pitfalls of school and home and contends with bullies, girls and family politics. In the distance, the Falklands conflict breaks out; close at hand, the village mobilises against a gypsy camp. And through Jason's eyes, we see what he doesn't know he knows - and watch unfold what will make him wish his life had been as uneventful as he had believed. Vividly capturing the mood of the times - high unemployment, Cold War politics and the sunset of agrarian England - this is at once a portrait of an era and of an age: the black hole between childhood and teenagerdom.