#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • Named a Best Book of the Year by The Globe and Mail • The New York Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Daily Telegraph • The Guardian • The Washington Post • A “suspenseful, dazzlingly clever and gravely profound” ( The Washington Post ) novel that brilliantly recasts Shakespeare and lends new weight to the age-old question of Hamlet's hesitation, from the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Lessons, On Chesil Beach and Atonement . Trudy has been unfaithful to her husband, John. She's still in the marital home—a valuable old London townhouse—but she has kicked John out. In his place is her lover, John's own brother, the profoundly banal Claude. The illicit couple have hatched a murderous plan to rid themselves of her inconvenient husband forever. But there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy's womb. As Trudy's unborn son listens, bound within her body, to the tragic end that his mother and his uncle have planned for his hapless father, he gives us a truly new perspective on our world, seen from the confines of his. “Smart, funny, and utterly captivating.” — The New York Times “A psychological thriller of the first order.” — The Weekly Standard