THE AFFIRMATION is his compulsive and original novel of an autobiography that isn't - partly a thriller, partly a haunting study of schizophrenia, it is the mark of one of Britain's finest novelists at the very height of his powers.

Peter Sinclair is tormented by bereavement and failure. In an attempt to conjure some meaning from his life, he embarks on an autobiography, but he finds himself writing the story of another man in another, imagined, world, whose insidious attraction draws him even further in . . .