**WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025** 'A masterpiece. Pure brilliance from the first to the (devastating) last sentence' India Knight 'So brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money' David Nicholls 'Spare, visceral, urgent, compelling' Gary Stevenson 'Brilliance on every page' Samantha Harvey Through chance, luck and choice, one man's life takes him from a modest apartment in Hungary to the elite society of London - in this captivating new novel about the forces that make and break our lives Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour - a married woman close to his mother's age - as his only companion. As these encounters shift into a clandestine relationship, István's life spirals out of control. Years later, rising through the ranks from the army to the elite circles of London's super-rich, he navigates the twenty-first century's tides of money and power. Torn between love, intimacy, status, and wealth, his newfound riches threaten to undo him completely. 'How do I get out of a reading slump? This is the book to do that' Rhianna Dhillon, BBC Radio 4 'Hugely entertaining, gripping like a thriller' The Times 'So much searing insight into the way we live now' Observer 'One of the most astonishing books I've ever read' Dua Lipa 'Refreshing, illuminating and true' Financial Times 'Compelling and elegant, merciless and poignant' Tessa Hadley 'Utterly engrossing and I read it all in a day' 5* reader review 'I was hooked and tried to read this book with any spare moment that I had' 5* reader review A 'Best Book of 2025' in the Guardian , Observer , Financial Times , Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail.