In the quiet cul-de-sac where Keith and Stephen live the only immediate signs of the Second World War are the blackout at night and a single random bombsite. But the two boys start to suspect that all is not what it seems when one day Keith announces a disconcerting discovery: the Germans have infiltrated his own family. And when the secret underground world they have dreamed up emerges from the shadows they find themselves engulfed in mysteries far deeper and more painful than they had bargained for.'Bernard Shaw couldn't do it, Henry James couldn't do it, but the ingenious English author Michael Frayn does do it: write novels and plays with equal success ... Frayn's novel excels.' John updike, New Yorker'A beautifully accomplished, richly nostalgic novel about supposed second-world-war espionage seen through the eyes of a young boy.' Sunday Times'Deeply satisfying . . . Frayn has written nothing better.' Independent

Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933 and began his career as a journalist on the Guardian and the Observer. His plays include Alphabetical Order, Clouds, Donkeys' Years, Make or Break and Benefactors. Noises Off won the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy of the Year and the Laurence Olivier Best Comedy of the Year. His more recent plays include Copenhagen, which won the 1998 Evening Standard Award for Best Play of the Year and the 2000 Tony Award for Best Play (USA), and Democracy which opened to great critical acclaim in 2003. His latest play, Afterlife, was first performed in 2008.He has also translated a number of works from Russian, including plays by Chekhov and Tolstoy. His films for television include First and Last (1989), for which he won an Emmy, and an adaptation of his 1991 novel A Landing on the Sun.His novels include Headlong (1999), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Spies (2002), which won the Whitbread Novel Award.He is married to the biographer and critic Claire Tomalin.