The Little Man from Archangel (Penguin Books)

`A unique teller of tales... What interested Simenon was the average man losing control of his own fate` Observer `She was beautiful, full of vitality, and he was sixteen years older, a dusty, lonely bookseller whose only passion in life was collecting stamps.` Jonas is used to his young wife disappearing.

Everyone in the town knows that she goes off with other men. This time, however, he tells a small lie to protect her, saying she is visiting a school friend. It is a lie, however, that eats into him like an illness, provoking hostility and resentment of this timid little Russian-Jewish bookseller, who always thought he had been accepted.

As suspicion mounts, his true, terrifying isolation is revealed.