Putney by Sofka Zinovieff

A Book of the Year 2018 – Chosen by the Observer, New Statesman and Spectator

1970s London. Ralph, an up-and-coming composer, has gone to visit Edmund Greenslay in his riverside home. At the heart of the house’s wild bliss he finds Edmund’s nine-year-old daughter Daphne, flitting, sprite-like, through the house’s colourful rooms and unruly garden. From the moment their lives collide Ralph is consumed by an obsession to make Daphne his.

Decades later, Daphne watches her own daughter come of age and is confronted with the truth of her own childhood – and a devastating act of violence that has lain hidden for decades.

About the Author

Sofka Zinovieff was born in London. She studied social anthropology at Cambridge, then lived in Greece and Moscow. She is the acclaimed author of three works of non-fiction, Eurydice Street: A Place in Athens, Red Princess: A Revolutionary Life and The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me, a New York Times Editors’ Choice 2015, and one previous novel, The House on Paradise Street.

Her writing has appeared in publications including the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement, the Spectator and the Independent. She divides her time between Athens and England.