Patricia Duncker is the author of six novels: Hallucinating Foucault (winner of the Dillons First Fiction Award and the McKitterick Prize in 1996), The Deadly Space Between, James Miranda Barry, Miss Webster and Chérif (shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2007), The Strange Case of the Composer and his Judge (shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger award for Best Crime Novel of the Year in 2010) and Sophie and the Sibyl. She has written one other work of short fiction, Monsieur Shoushana’s Lemon Trees (shortlisted for the Macmillan Silver Pen Award in 1997) and a collection of essays, Writing on the Wall. Patricia Duncker is Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of Manchester.

Duncker is a mistress of suspense ... A febrile, fascinating, disquieting read. It asserts itself for what it is: serious stuff, to be read in one gulp and then mulled over for days