David Szalay

Szalay’s diverse protagonists circumnavigate the planet in twelve flights, from London to Madrid, from Dakar to Sao Paulo, to Toronto, to Delhi, to Doha, en route to see lovers or estranged siblings, aging parents, baby grandchildren, or nobody at all....

Twelve people on the move around planet Earth, 12 individual lives, each in turmoil, and each in some way touching the next. In this nuanced and deeply moving sequence, David Szalay's diverse protagonists circumnavigate the world in 12 plane journeys....

Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour – a married woman close to his mother’s age – as his only companion.

From Booker Prize finalist David Szalay comes a propulsive, hypnotic novel about a man whose future is derailed by a series of events that he is unable to control.