Passage

'This short, breathtakingly hypnotic novel held me in its grip until the very last word' Miranda Seymour The story of a long-simmering love triangle set in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, from the Booker-longlisted novelist and travel writer. 'She was standing at the boat's prow. He thought: this is how I will remember her, looking into the wind, serene. This will outlast whatever is to come.' Kathleen lies awake in the operating theatre as she undergoes brain surgery, her husband Robert watching. Soon afterwards, the couple leave for an ill-advised holiday in Egypt, together with the third person in their marriage, Robert's brother Alan. Each of them is aware that the tumour in Kathleen's brain may be fatal. For Kathleen, an actor, the trauma of her operation brings a haunting sense of the frailty of her identity. Her descent along the ancient Egyptian tomb corridors - symbols of the passage beyond death - evokes a fevered elation. Ashraf, their Egyptian guide, is compulsively drawn to her, even as he is caught up in the conflicted politics of his country. As each character struggles with the weight of the past and the uncertainty of the future, the mounting tension resolves in delusion - and a shattering betrayal. In taut, shimmering prose, Colin Thubron shifts among the perspectives of the four protagonists in a narrative of mesmerising scope and power. Praise for Colin Thubron: 'No writer has more successfully combined the disciplines of travel writing and fiction than Colin Thubron ... A master craftsman' The Times 'One of our greatest prose writers in any genre' William Dalyrymple '[An] irresistible narrative gift' Ursula Le Guin

Colin Thubron is an acknowledged master of travel writing, and the winner of many prizes and awards. His first writing was about the Middle East - Damascus, Lebanon and Cyprus. In 1982 he travelled into the Soviet Union in an ancient Morris Marina, pursued by the KGB, a journey he recorded in Among the Russians. From these early experiences developed his classic travel books: Behind the Wall (winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Award), The Lost Heart of Asia, In Siberia (Prix Bouvier) and Shadow of the Silk Road. His most recent book is To a Mountain in Tibet (all available in Vintage). Colin Thubron was President of the Royal Society of Literature from 2010 to 2017.