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’s ease with tech and sharp eye help Noah unearth troubling details about their family’s past, both of them come to grasp the risks that people in all eras have run for their loved ones, and find they are more akin than they knew.

Written with all the tenderness and psychological intensity that made Room a huge bestseller, 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

Donoghue mines material that on the face of it appears intractably bleak and surfaces with a powerful, compulsively readable work of fiction * Irish Times * Absorbing, truthful and beautiful . . . it is a kind of sustained poem in praise of motherhood and parental love * Observer * Sophisticated in outlook and execution . . . Utterly plausible, vividly described * New York Times * One of the most profoundly affecting books I've read in a long time -- John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas Praise for Room: Emma Donoghue's writing is superb alchemy, changing innocence into horror and horror into tenderness -- Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife A poignant and hopeful tale * Woman Magazine * 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. -- Nina Pottell * 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 * An important, touching novel that stays with you long after you're done reading it. * Independent * Akin offers a subtle, entertaining portrait of the relationship-and friction-between age and youth. * The Economist * Highly emotional but never sentimental. * Vogue *