The Apartment - Greg Baxter

The Apartment, the astonishing first novel by Greg Baxter, is a tale of war and peace, friendship and aloneness.

A man walks across an old European capital. Heavy snow falls. He has come here from far away, hoping to forget. Instead, he remembers: home, war, lost friends. Complicity. In the company of a new friend and alive to the new experiences of the city, he moves through the snow and his complicated history in search of an apartment.

The Apartment, by the author of the acclaimed memoir A Preparation for Death, is a novel about war, the relationship between America and the rest of the world, and the brittle foundations of Western culture; but above all it is a book about the mysteries and alchemies of friendship - truthful, moving and brilliant. Acclaimed by Hisham Matar, Adam Thorpe and Roddy Doyle, among others, The Apartment is a deeply original and profoundly involving novel.

''Admirable for its scope, ambition and unashamed seriousness of purpose, as well as its willingness to take stylistic and structural risks'' Julie Myerson, Observer

''Stunningly good'' Susan Jeffreys, Saturday Review, BBC Radio Four

''Baxter''s superbly elegant, understated writing explores the dynamics of America''s relationship with the rest of the world'' The Times

''Lucidly written and astutely observed ... The novel exerts a hypnotic force ... Baxter continually undercuts our expectations for his novel. And it is precisely this sort of subversion, along with the author''s shimmering prose, that makes The Apartment such a surprisingly compelling read'' New York Times

''Absorbing, atmospheric and enigmatic ... Its long, frigid journey into a long, sleepless night explores a man''s uneasy relationship with his past, himself and a world in which violence is inescapable'' Los Angeles Times

''Powerful ... Baxter''s clean and direct prose generates its own momentum'' Daily Beast

''A wonderful, horrible, wise novel'' Dazed & Confused (Book of the Month)

''A dark and sinewy novel, written with sparse clarity and affecting subtlety'' Stuart Evers, Observer (Books of the Year)

Greg Baxter was born in Texas in 1974. He lived for a number of years in Dublin, and now lives in Berlin. He is the author of the acclaimed memoir A Preparation for Death. The Apartment is his first novel.