---

´Among the hottest books of this blazing summer´ (Daily Telegraph): a bold, lushly written novel that will compel and disquiet in equal measure

---

´Among the hottest books of this blazing summer´ (Daily Telegraph): a bold, lushly written novel that will compel and disquiet in equal measure

A BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018 - CHOSEN BY THE OBSERVER, NEW STATESMAN AND SPECTATOR

It is the 1970s and Ralph, an up-and-coming composer, is visiting Edmund Greenslay at his riverside home in Putney to discuss a collaboration. Through the house´s colourful rooms and unruly garden flits nine-year-old Daphne - dark, teasing, slippery as mercury, more sprite than boy or girl. From the moment their worlds collide, Ralph is consumed by an obsession to make Daphne his.

But Ralph is twenty-five and Daphne is only a child, and even in the bohemian abandon of 1970s London their fast-burgeoning relationship must be kept a secret. It is not until years later that Daphne is forced to confront
the truth of her own childhood - and an act of violence that has lain hidden for decades.

Putney is a bold, thought-provoking novel about the moral lines we tread, the stories we tell ourselves and the memories that play themselves out again and again, like snatches of song.

---

Certain books worm their way into your soul, grabbing you from the opening paragraph and holding you in their grip until the final page has been turned. Sofka Zinovieff´s Putney is just such a book, compelling the reader from its atmospheric opening until its bruising, bittersweet end Sarah Hughes i

---

Zinovieff, Sofka
Sofka Zinovieff was born in London. She studied social anthropology at Cambridge, then lived in Greece and Moscow. She is the acclaimed author of three works of non-fiction, Eurydice Street: A Place in Athens, Red Princess: A Revolutionary Life and The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me, a New York Times Editors´ Choice 2015, and one previous novel, The House on Paradise Street. Her writing has appeared in publications including the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement, the Spectator and theIndependent. She divides her time between Athens and England.

sofkazinovieff.com

---