The Stranger's Child

A National Book Critics Award finalist from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Line of Beauty and The Sparsholt Affair: a magnificent, century-spanning saga about a love triangle that spawns a myth, and a family mystery, across generations.

A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century

In the summer of 1913, George Sawle brings his Cambridge schoolmate-a handsome, aristocratic young poet named Cecil Valance-to his family's home outside London. George is enthralled by Cecil, and soon his sister, Daphne, is equally besotted by him. That weekend, Cecil writes a poem that, after he is killed in the Great War and his reputation burnished, will become a touchstone for a generation, a work recited by every schoolchild in England. Over time, a tragic love story is spun, even as other secrets lie buried-until, decades later, an ambitious biographer threatens to unearth them.