From the award-winning author of Harvest, Quarantine, and Being Dead, a tender new novel about music, celebrity, local intrigue, and lost love.

Aside from his trusty piano, Alfred Busi lives alone in his villa overlooking the waves. Famed in his tiny Mediterranean town for his music, he is mourning the recent death of his wife and quietly living out his days. Then one night, Busi is wrested from bed by noises in his courtyard and then stunned by an attacking intruder--his hands and neck are scratched, his face is bitten. Busi insists his assailant was neither man nor animal.

The attack sets off a chain of events that will cast a shadow on Busi's career, imperil his home, and alter the fabric of his town. Busi's own account of what happened is embellished to fan the flames of old rumor--of an ancient race of people living in the surrounding forest. It is also used to spark new controversy, inspiring claims that something must finally be done about the town's poor, the feral vagabonds at its edges, whose numbers have been growing.

In trademark crystalline prose, Jim Crace portrays a man taking stock of his life and looking into an uncertain future, all while bearing witness to a community in the throes of great change--with echoes of today's most pressing social questions.