by Simon Mawer
First published 2011
Dee Denham lies dying in her bed, once the celebrated belle of British colonial Cyprus. She tells her son Thomas that her sickness serves as punishment for past sins. After her death, Thomas becomes consumed with deciphering her cryptic final statement. He sifts through yellowed photographs and old love letters. He tracks down aging survivors from the colonial era. He wrestles with his own fractured childhood memories of some long-ago betrayal. His investigation pulls him into the vanished world of 1950s Cyprus, where British expatriates sipped cocktails at the Harbour Club while political tensions simmered beneath the surface. The island bloomed with oleander and carob trees, but also harbored secrets in shuttered bedrooms. As Thomas pieces together his mother's story, he discovers a web of adultery, espionage, and violence that shaped her life. The personal drama unfolds against Cyprus's march toward independence and the collapse of the British Empire.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, mystery, adult-fiction
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Cyprus, Ithaca
Period: 1950s
346 pages · Kindle Edition · Abacus
Content warnings: colonialism, violence