Description

WINNER OF THE INDEPENDENT FOREIGN FICTION PRIZE AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE IMPAC DUBLIN PRIZE

‘A wonderful novel. Wise and generous to a fault of all our human failings and frailties’ Lloyd Jones, author of Mister Pip

A Dutch woman rents a remote farm in rural Wales. She says her name is Emilie. She has left her husband, having confessed to an affair.

In Amsterdam, her stunned husband forms a strange partnership with a detective who agrees to help him trace her. They board the ferry to Hull on Christmas Eve.

Back on the farm, a young man out walking with his dog injures himself and stays the night, then ends up staying longer. Yet something is deeply wrong. Does he know what he is getting himself into? And what will happen when her husband and the detective arrive?

Publisher Review

Simple and devastating -- Daniel Hahn * Independent * The Detour is a beautiful, oddly moving work of fiction, a quiet read that lingers long in the mind, like the ghosts that linger in our homes, and in the land around us -- John Burnside * Guardian * This is a novel full of hints and mysteries... [It] will almost certainly keep you routed to your chair until the denouement. -- Connie Bensley * The Spectator * Quietly astonishing -- Jonathan Gibbs * Times Literary Supplement * Intelligently thoughtful -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times *