The Hand

A brilliant portrait of betrayal, hypocrisy, love and loss * Chicago Tribune *One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century … Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories * Guardian *Irresistible… read him at your peril, avoid him at your loss * The Sunday Times *The romans durs are extraordinary: tough, bleak, offhandedly violent, suffused with guilt and bitterness, redolent of place … utterly unsentimental, frightening in the pitilessness of their gaze, yet wonderfully entertaining – John BanvilleThe novels brim with atmosphere, insight and intelligence … quite unlike anything else written before or since – India Knight * The Times *

Georges Simenon was born in Liège, Belgium in 1903. An intrepid traveller with a profound interest in people, Simenon strove on and off the page to understand, rather than to judge, the human condition in all its shades. His novels include the Inspector Maigret series and a richly varied body of wider work united by its evocative power, its economy of means, and its penetrating psychological insight. He is among the most widely read writers in the global canon. He died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life.