The Dancer Upstairs

When John Dyer returns to Oxford from Brazil with his young son, Leandro, he expects a quiet life. His time living on the edge as a foreign correspondent is over. But these rainy streets turn out to be just as treacherous as those he used to walk in Rio. Leandro's schoolmates are the children of powerful people, and a chance conversation with another father, Iranian scientist Rustum Marvar, sets Dyer onto a truly dangerous path. Then Marvar disappears. Soon, sinister factions are circling, and become acutely interested in what Dyer knows about Marvar's world-changing discovery...

Bruce Chatwin is one of the most significant British novelists and travel writers of our time. His books have become modern-day classics which defy categorisation, inspired by and reflecting his incredible journeys. Tragically, Chatwin's compelling narrative voice was cut off just as he had found it. 'Bruce had just begun' said his friend, Salman Rushdie, 'we saw only the first act'. But Chatwin left behind a wealth of letters and postcards that he wrote, from his first week at school until shortly before his death at the age of forty-eight. Whether typed on Sotheby's notepaper or hastily scribbled, Chatwin's correspondence reveals more about himself than he was prepared to expose in his books; his health and finances, his literary ambitions and tastes, his uneasiness about his sexual orie...