SECRET Philippe Grimbert
(translated from the French by Polly McClean)

This novel is about a secret – to give clues would be to spoil the experience of finding out for oneself. The reader needs to keep in step with the narrator, to share the narrator's astonishment as the secret unfolds. He is a sickly, imaginative child born of beautiful, athletic parents; he senses there is something sinister and significant he is not being told. When he is 15, he begins to find out the truth and to understand his parents’ sidelong glances. I felt I travelled the painful journey with him and together we discovered a tale which is shocking, compelling and profoundly moving. This beautifully written book is unforgettable.