Music, In a Foreign Language

Winner of Scotland's Saltire Prize for Best First Novel

Set in an imaginary police state in modern Britain, Andrew Crumey's debut novel explores the complex friendship between two men, Charles King and Robert Waters, a physicist and a historian who share a secret history of political and sexual dimensions. An underground magazine they had once co-published brings then under an investigation that pits one against the other. As the novel's narrator unfolds the tale, he reveals pieces of his own life. His autobiography is augmented by the story of the two friends like the melody and counterpoint of a fugue, until both movements inevitably join across time.