The Book of Guilt - Hardcover

by Catherine Chidgey (Author)

Amazon Editors' Best Books of 2025 Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Books of 2025

From the acclaimed author of Pet, in an alternate world where nobody won WWII, three brothers are the only boys left in an orphanage whose dark secret is the reason for their existence--and the key to their survival.

"Grand and devastating ... brims with vitality--and soul." --The New York Times

After a very different outcome to WWII than the one history recorded, 1979 England is a country ruled by a government whose aims have sinister underpinnings and alliances. In the Hampshire countryside, thirteen-year-old triplets Vincent, Lawrence and William are the last remaining residents at the Captain Scott Home for Boys, where every day they must take medicine to protect themselves from a mysterious illness to which many of their friends have succumbed. The lucky ones who recover are allowed to move to Margate, a seaside resort of mythical proportions.

In nearby Exeter, thirteen-year-old Nancy lives a secluded life with her parents, who dote on her but never let her leave the house. As the triplets' lives begin to intersect with Nancy's, bringing to light a horrifying truth about their origins and their likely fate, the children must unite to escape--and survive.

Author Biography

Catherine Chidgey's novels have been published to international acclaim. Her first, In a Fishbone Church, won Best First Book at the New Zealand Book Awards and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. In the UK it won the Betty Trask Award and was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Her second, Golden Deeds, was a Notable Book of the Year in the New York Times and a Best Book in the LA Times. Catherine has won the Prize in Modern Letters, the Katherine Mansfield Award, the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship and the Janet Frame Fiction Prize. Her novel Remote Sympathy was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Her novels The Wish Child and The Axeman's Carnival both won the Acorn Prize for Fiction, New Zealand's most prestigious literary award. She lives in Cambridge, New Zealand, and lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Waikato.