Passage

‘Combining Thubron’s uncannily attentive eye for the telling detail with the power of a great storyteller, this short, breathtakingly hypnotic novel held me in its grip until the very last word. And then, I turned back to the start and read it all over again. A masterpiece’ * Miranda Seymour, author of I Used to Live Here Once *
‘In just over 120 pages, Passage opens up a profound and exhilarating exploration of the intricacies of the brain, the nature of the self, marriage and lost love; of betrayal, grief and Egyptian politics in the heady and dangerous days following the Arab Spring. In this gift of a novel Colin Thubron takes his readers on an adventure through the terrain of what it means to be alive in a fallible mind and body. There are very few writers who could say so much with such economy’ * Daisy Hay, author of Dinner with Joseph Johnson *
‘Passage looks deep into memory, love and betrayal. I read it in hours, but it haunted me for days’ * Carole Angier, author of Speak, Silence *
‘The slimness of Passage belies its depths. In a little over a hundred pages, Thubron teases out more insights into the human mind than you’ll find in volumes and volumes of psychology and neuroscience. The glowing and sensitive prose sketches the tenuous grip we have on ourselves, the elusiveness of other people; and the tricks our minds can play on us as we imagine, remember, forget and regret. I finished Thubron’s final few pages with a vivid sense of being ‘living tissue’ – and of all the possibilities and perils that involves for fragile creatures like us’ * Daniel Yon, author of A Trick of the Mind *

COLIN THUBRON is a celebrated travel writer, winner of many prizes and awards. His classic travel books include:

• Among the Russians (1983)
• Behind the Wall (1987)
• In Siberia (1999)
• Shadow of the Silk Road (2006)
• The Amur River (2021)

He is also the author of eight acclaimed works of fiction, including:

• A Cruel Madness (1984), winner of the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award
• To the Last City, long-listed for the Booker Prize (2002)
• Night of Fire (2017)

Passage is his ninth novel, shaped by a journey to Egypt.

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