The Standing Pool - Couverture souple

'All kinds of evil under the sun seethe in Adam Thorpe's superior novel... wincingly precise in his imagery and technically adept, he has here crafted an electric and darkly gleeful read' Daily Mail

Two Cambridge academics, the historians Nick and Sarah Mallinson, take a sabbatical with their three small and lively girls in a remote Languedoc farmhouse. But the farmhouse contains its own histories, far darker and murkier than the Mallinsons are used to dealing with. As the illusion of Eden retreats, the couple begin to feel the vulnerability of being among strangers...

'An immensely clever, tragicomic novel... a rich meditation on past and present colonial politics... what resonates is what I greatly admire in all Thorpe's work: the complex depth, and the texture and poetry of his storytelling language' Financial Times

'An intimate depiction of family life... vivid and luminous' Independent on Sunday

'Because this is Adam Thorpe, there are two things of which you can be certain: that the writing will be gorgeous, silky-smooth, and that the plot will be entirely original, defying categorisation... read, enjoy and wait' Sunday Telegraph

'An intricate fiction that reminds us gently that war wrecks lives in ways too tangled to anticipate' Times Literary Supplement