The Dinner (Paperback)

Herman Koch

ISBN 10: 1782394885 / ISBN 13: 9781782394884

Published by Atlantic Books, London, 2014

About this Item

Paperback. THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER THAT'S GOT EVERYONE TALKING.A summer's evening in Amsterdam and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant. Between mouthfuls of food and over the delicate scraping of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of politeness - the banality of work, the triviality of holidays. But the empty words hide a terrible conflict and, with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. Together, the boys have committed a horrifying act, caught on camera, and their grainy images have been beamed into living rooms across the nation; despite a police manhunt, the boys remain unidentified - by everyone except their parents. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children and, as civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple shows just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS - INTERNATIONAL AUTHOR OF THE YEARLONGLISTED FOR THE IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARDS'A brilliantly addictive novel that wraps its hands around your throat on page one and doesn't let go' -- SJ Watson The million-copy bestseller that has got everyone talking. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781782394884

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Dinner (Paperback)
• Publisher: Atlantic Books, London
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1782394885
• ISBN 13: 9781782394884
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

I felt the same cold that I had felt earlier that evening in my son's room, the cold that came from inside. Beside the homeless person's head, Rick's face appeared. My nephew grinned at the camera. 'Take one,' he said. 'Action!'

An evening in Amsterdam and two couples meet for dinner to discuss their teenage sons. The boys have committed a horrifying crime, caught on CCTV, but so far they remain unidentified - except by their parents. Over the polite hum of restaurant conversation and the squeal of cutlery on plates, the couples have a question to answer: how far will they go to protect their children?

Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2013: A good unreliable narrator is one of the most satisfying characters a novelist can dream up--and Herman Koch takes us on a hell of a ride through the mind of Paul Lohman, the deliciously sinister host of The Dinner. Paul's 15-year-old son, Michel, has committed an unspeakable crime; his brother, on the cusp of becoming the Netherlands' next prime minister, has a delicate wife and two teenagers who share Michel’s secret; Paul's wife, Claire, will do anything to protect their boy. As the two couples inch through an excruciating meal at a chic restaurant--their children's whereabouts uncertain--Paul peels back the layers of their situation, weaving to and fro through time and truth. Koch's finely structured story gives away just enough on each page to keep us riveted, feeling like private investigators on the verge of discovery, until the shock of an ending. It's no small feat for the author that the less we trust Paul, the more we want to hear what he has to say. --Mia Lipman