Serenity House

Max Montfalcon lay in bed and tried to remember how many people he had killed... Old Max, the genial giant of Serenity House, north London's 'Premier Eventide Refuge', might have been left to die in peace. But his son-in-law Albert, an MP with a special interest in the War Crimes Bill, has other ideas. Then Jack arrives. An all-American boy who survives on a diet of video nasties and Chinese takeaways. Max is haunted by dreams of the Holocaust. And the occupants of Serenity House are haunted by Jack...

CHRISTOPHER HOPE was born in Johannesburg in 1944. He is the author of nine novels, including Kruger's Alp, which won the Whitbread Prize for Fiction, Serenity House, which was shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize, and My Mother's Lovers, published by Atlantic Books in 2006 to great acclaim. He is also a poet and playwright and author of the celebrated memoir White Boy Running (1988). The Garden of Bad Dreams is his latest collection of short stories.