From the bestselling, twice-Orange Prize-shortlisted, National Book Award-nominated author comes a tale of transformation; a richly layered masterpiece' (Financial Times)

A brilliant novel ' Philip Roth

Impossible to put down ' Independent
Dazzling ' Guardian
Jules Epstein has vanished from the world. He leaves no trace but a rundown flat patrolled by a solitary cockroach, and a monogrammed briefcase abandoned in the desert.
To Epstein 's mystified family, the disappearance of a man whose drive and avidity have been a force to be reckoned with for sixty-eight years marks the conclusion of a gradual fading. This transformation began in the wake of Epstein 's parents ' deaths, and continued with his divorce after more than thirty-five years of marriage, his retirement from a New York legal firm, and the rapid shedding of his possessions. With the last of his wealth and a nebulous plan, he departs for the Tel Aviv Hilton.
Meanwhile, a novelist leaves her husband and children behind in Brooklyn and checks into the same hotel, hoping to unlock her writer 's block. But when a man claiming to be a retired professor of literature recruits her for a project involving Kafka, she is drawn into a mystery that will take her on a metaphysical journey and change her in ways she could never have imagined.
Bursting with life and humour, this is a profound, mesmerising, achingly beautiful novel of metamorphosis and self-realisation.