It's summer 1968, and the world is reeling from war and assassinations, protests and riots. In a sunny British seaside town, producer Talbot Kydd, novelist Elfrida Wing, and actress Anny Viklund are enduring their own more private crises on the set of a disaster-plagued movie. All are leading secret lives—one is in the closet; another is an alcoholic; and the third is sleeping with her costar. As the shoot zigs and zags, these layers of secrets become increasingly more untenable—and that's before the FBI and CIA get involved. Someone is going to crack, or maybe they all will.

"It would be hard to think of a living novelist whose books encompass more history, more settings, more professions, more varieties of individual fate, than William Boyd."—NYTBR