A novel about politics, the power of film, the nature of history and, above all, about two people caught hopelessly in love, subject to the stresses of fame and scandal, by Booker Prize nominated author Justin Cartwright. Richard McAllister, a young minister in the government, has temporarily left the Cabinet while recovering from being stabbed by a thug at a football match. He has decided, while recuperating, to go to South Africa to research a relative and his account of the horse in the Boer War. While in Mafeking, he is called back to London because his passionate affair with an actress has become public knowledge. From that moment, the love affair becomes almost impossibly fraught. The press hound them, the government spin doctors try to suppress all news and Joanna's husband becomes very vindictive. The lovers are parted, and Joanna leaves for America.

* The Whitbread-shortlisted novel from the bestselling author of THE PROMISE OF HAPPINESS * 'Brilliant, dazzling, unsettling; subtle and haunting; complex and multi-layered; deeply moving' - Independent on Sunday 'Cartwright is a brilliant observer and writes extremely well . . . [he] has produced an X-ray of modern man's soul' - Evening Standard A motorcycle messenger goes into a small park in London to paint the words 'White Lightning' on the tank of his bike. This is the beginning of an extraordinary novel. It is told over the space of a few months, and in these few months one man's whole life - his failures, his successes, his longing for peace and fulfilment, his loves and his tragedies - are recounted. These memories include his film Suzi Crispin, Night Nurse, and - the darkest moment - the death of his son, which has haunted him. He inherits a small amount of money and buys a rundown farm in South Africa, where he dreams of creating an Arcadia. On the farm is a captive baboon, Piet, who becomes startlingly involved in his new life. He also has a love affair with a local woman, and becomes hauntingly involved with an African family of squatters. All the while the narrator contemplates his own life back in England and so the novel is also a sharp commentary on what Englishness means. This is a novel about the human enterprise. It is surprising, tender, funny and utterly original.

* WINNER OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN M-NET LITERARY AWARD * A tale of deception, misunderstanding, and betrayal set between modern-day Africa and Nazi-occupied France. Haunted by his dreams of the Masai, Tim Curtiz journeys to East Africa to research and write a screenplay about the enigmatic Claudia Cohn-Casson, a French anthropologist who studied the Masai in the late 1930s and was then deported to Auschwitz upon her return to Paris. 'It is like a little death to put this book down' Times Literary Supplement

In Justin Cartwright's fourth, immaculately written novel, a journalist and filmmaker tells the story of his attempt to unravel the mystery of his father's ill-fated expedition to Africa in 1959. 'Dodging the vested interests of the Ngwenya clan, his wayward wife Magdan and the colonial dinosaur Jumbo Munroe, the narrator embarks on a quasi-biblical quest . . . a tale that hits the ground running and continues at a vigorous pace. This is one of the shrewdest and most diverting novels about Africa one could hope to read.' Daily Telegraph

* shortlisted for both the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel Award, and winner of a Commonwealth Writers Prize * Set against the background of Nelson Mandela's release, IN EVERY FACE I MEET is the story of Anthony Northleach, and one intense, comic and horrifying day in his life. With the brio and intelligence for which he has been so widely praised, Justin Cartwright captures the life of an apparently ordinary Englishman - his marriage, his work, his sexual relationships and his connection to the events and sports of the world around him - until his day takes on the aspect first of a waking dream then of a true nightmare. Its horrifying conclusion, as Anthony Northleach runs into a south London prosititute, is shocking because the reader has come to see his story as both emblematic and savagely observant. Friendship, it seems, is all Anthony has left.

A gratifyingly unsound psychological odyssey . . . Cartwright destabilizes the novel's placid surface with aftershocks of historical tragedies. - The New York Times Book Review Frank McAllister has long since dropped Retief as his middle name, but the legacy of his family's history proves harder to shake. His ancestor Piet Retief, leader of the South African Great Trek, was killed by Zulu king Dingane in the 1838 massacre, along with a hundred men, women, and children. Afrikaner legend paints Retief as a homegrown Moses, bringing his people to the Promised Land. But Frank believes something rotten lies at the core of this family myth. Frank spends his days in his London home with his new partner and her son and the products of his wealth. But the return of his daughter, Lucinda, from rehab in California brings him intense guilt: having sided with him during his divorce from her mother, she crumbled under the weight of the bitter separation. Lucinda has brought home with her a mysterious boy, and they will join the family trip to Frank's beach house in South Africa--not far from the site of the 1838 massacre. In the lulls of their idyllic days, Frank unravels what really happened on that fateful day, and how it may connect to the violence of the apartheid years, and the violence encroaching on them even now. Up Against the Night is an enthralling tale of personal conflict and intrigue, set against the backdrop of South Africa's tangled past and troubled present, and told with tremendous color and insight. Absolutely original and gripping, it is destined to be as influential as JM Coetzee's Disgrace.

* WINNER OF A WHITBREAD NOVEL AWARD * A rich portrayal of small-town life with wonderfully evoked characters and beautifully observed writing. Dan Silas returns to America for his high school reunion where he makes some unexpected discoveries. His former girlfriend tells him that her daughter was his child and Dan's oldest friend has suffered a breakdown and now believes himself to be the reincarnation of an Indian chief. In an attempt to make sense of these disturbing facts, Dan digs further into their lives, with both tragic and comic results. 'A wonderfully observed novel which provides a rare outsider's glimpse of the quiet despair that lurks behind those bright, perfectly-formed American smiles' Literary Review

'The satirical English novel of the decade' Observer From the moment an unemployed City broker is devoured by an escapee from the Zoo, we are embarked upon a dazzling journey through '90s London. A city peopled by a rich and varied cast of characters with intriguingly different backgrounds: from the City, to journalism, the criminal underworld, advertising, music hall and the East End... while lurking in the background is nemesis, in the shape of a hungry lion. 'Does for London what Bonfire of the Vanities did for New York.' The Sunday Times

Charles Judd meanders round his local Cornish beach, contemplating the turns his life has taken. His wife Daphne struggles hopelessly with the latest fish recipe, trying to keep something in her life under control. Two of their children are keeping it all together - just. But they are all still recovering from the shock of the prodigal daughter, Juliet, being imprisoned in New York State for her part in an art theft. Since then, Charles appears to have lost his entire family. Now Juliet is being released, the family is about to be reunited and the wounds her imprisonment has caused are being re-opened.