Description

Akin is a tender tale of love, loss and family, from Emma Donoghue, the international bestselling author of Room.

‘If Room forced home truths on us, about parenthood, responsibility and love, Akin deals with similar subject matter more subtly, but in the end just as compellingly’ – Guardian

A retired New York professor’s life is thrown into chaos when he takes his great-nephew to the French Riviera, in hopes of uncovering his own mother’s wartime secrets.

Noah is only days away from his first trip back to Nice since he was a child when a social worker calls looking for a temporary home for Michael, his eleven-year-old great-nephew. Though he has never met the boy, he gets talked into taking him along to France.

This odd couple, suffering from jet lag and culture shock, argue about everything from steak hache to screen time, and the trip is looking like a disaster. But as Michael helps Noah unearth troubling details about their family’s past, they find they are more akin than they knew.

Akin is a funny, heart-wrenching tale of an old man and a boy who unpick their painful story and start to write a new one together.

‘Poignant and hopeful, the bestselling novelist of Room has delivered another exquisite portrayal of an adult and child making their way in the world’ – Woman & Home

Publisher Review

Touching * The Mail on Sunday * Like Room, which featured a boy and his mother held captive, Akin shows Donoghue's interest in the mind of a child, in this case that of Michael, an 11-year-old from a tough part of Brooklyn * Sunday Times * Akin spans continents and centuries, stretching the bonds that link children, parents and grandparents to breaking point * Times * Captivating . . . There is a lyrical, mesmerizing quality to the storytelling . . . It is the complex and soulful characters Donoghue creates that are most memorable in this novel * Times Literary Supplement * Soul stirring * O Magazine * We are never too old, Donoghue reminds us, to emerge from our childish dusks. What begins as a larky story of unlikely male bonding turns into an off-center but far richer novel about the unheralded, imperfect heroism of two women - Michael's incarcerated mother and Noah's long deceased one - and the way we preserve the past and prepare for the future * New York Times * Heartwarming and humourous * Radio Times * A delicate and moving reminder of the way in which our human stories are made from practical choices - often in life as well as in literature * Harper's Bazaar * Sweet, tender and defiantly unsentimental, this is a sad, funny look at how flawed, fragile people develop a sense of belonging * Psychologies * Absorbing. I loved the growing relationship between the two * Prima * A highly enjoyable novel * Daily Mail * Poignant and hopeful, the bestselling novelist of Room has delivered another exquisite portrayal of an adult and child making their way in the world * Woman & Home * Akin offers a subtle, entertaining portrait of the relationship - and friction - between age and youth * The Economist * If Room forced home truths on us, about parenthood, responsibility and love, Akin deals with similar subject matter more subtly, but in the end just as compellingly . . . This is a quietly moving novel that shows us how little we know one another, but how little, perhaps, we need to know in order to care * Guardian * Highly emotional but never sentimental * Vogue * An important, touching novel that stays with you long after you're done reading it * Independent *