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The breathtaking, emotionally wrenching new novel from the award-winning novelist and travel writer, Colin Thubron

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It began with a spark...

A house is burning. Its six tenants include a failed priest, a naturalist, a neurosurgeon and a photographer. Their landlord´s relationship to them is both intimate and shadowy. At times he shares their obsessions and memories. He will also share their fate.

The passions of these individuals reach beyond the dying house that holds them. One recalls a lonely childhood, another the cremation grounds of India, another an African refugee camp. But will their stories be consumed forever by the flames?

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"Thubron returns with what might be his masterpiece... Thubron´s prose shines a penetrating light on the nature of memory and being human. Sublime ." Simon Humphreys Mail on Sunday

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Colin Thubron is an acknowledged master of travel writing, and the winner of many prizes and awards. His first writing was about the Middle East - Damascus, Lebanon and Cyprus. In 1982 he travelled into the Soviet Union in an ancient Morris Marina, pursued by the KGB, a journey he recorded in Among the Russians. From these early experiences developed his classic travel books: Behind the Wall (winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Award), The Lost Heart of Asia, In Siberia (Prix Bouvier) and Shadow of the Silk Road. His most recent book is To a Mountain in Tibet (all available in Vintage). Colin Thubron was President of the Royal Society of Literature from 2010 to 2017.

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