He is a middle-aged American writer called Philip; she is an articulate, well-educated Englishwoman trapped in a loveless and humiliating marriage. In Philip’s London studio, this play of voices – sharp, tender and inquiring – reveals both their past lives with startling clarity. Deception is fiendishly clever, as it dances with the conventions of the novel, and redefines the boundaries between fiction and reality.

‘This swift, elegant, disturbing novel…stands at the extreme of contemporary fiction‘ New York Times Book Review