NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING MASTERPIECE OF THE ROMANTIC SUSPENSE GENRE
‘The effect is powerful: here is naked obsession, sulfurous, total, scarcely possible to live with’ FINANCIAL TIMES
‘The reader looks on with mingled shock and fascination. A tour de force’ NEW YORK TIMES
‘A taut, sinister tale of erotic obsession’ VANITY FAIR
‘Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.’
Damage, Josephine Hart’s debut novel, an international bestseller, filmed with Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche, now takes its proper place as a Virago Modern Classic. It is the gripping story of a man’s desperate obsession and scandalous love affair. He is a man who appears to have everything: wealth, a beautiful wife and children, and a prestigious political career in Parliament. But his life lacks passion, and his aching emptiness drives him to an all-consuming and ultimately catastrophic relationship with his son’s fiancée.
‘A remarkable first novel of awesome accomplishment and quite startling psychological insight’ RUTH RENDELL
‘The effect is powerful: here is naked obsession, sulfurous, total, scarcely possible to live with’ FINANCIAL TIMES
‘The reader looks on with mingled shock and fascination. A tour de force’ NEW YORK TIMES
‘A taut, sinister tale of erotic obsession’ VANITY FAIR
‘Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.’
Damage, Josephine Hart’s debut novel, an international bestseller, filmed with Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche, now takes its proper place as a Virago Modern Classic. It is the gripping story of a man’s desperate obsession and scandalous love affair. He is a man who appears to have everything: wealth, a beautiful wife and children, and a prestigious political career in Parliament. But his life lacks passion, and his aching emptiness drives him to an all-consuming and ultimately catastrophic relationship with his son’s fiancée.
‘A remarkable first novel of awesome accomplishment and quite startling psychological insight’ RUTH RENDELL
Reviews
Josephine Hart's debut novel, Damage, was an instant success. She wrote this, a new introduction to the tale of erotic obsession, just before her death
The reader looks on with mingled shock and fascination. A tour de force
A passionate, elegant, ruthless story
The violent dreamscape of Damage stayed with me long after I closed the book. Did I dream it? Did I live it? My very uncertainty tells me I have read something rare
To read this tale of mutual obsession is like being abducted. Josephine Hart has managed to create a portrait of psychological and erotic obsession that is so compelling as, for a brief moment, to suck all the oxygen out of the air
The effect is powerful: here is naked obsession, sulfurous, total, scarcely possible to live with
Damage is a masterpiece
A taut, sinister tale of erotic obsession
A remarkable first novel of awesome accomplishment and quite startling psychological insight... 'Un-put-downable' is here, for once, not hyperbolic
Next to the often-contrived twists and revelations of today's psychological suspense, Hart's spare tale of all-consuming obsession is refreshingly straightforward
This spare, dreamlike first novel comes festooned with blurbs from the likes of Ruth Rendell and Iris Murdoch, and no wonder, for it's an unforgettable tale of sexual obsession and its calamitous consequences... Elliptical, haunting, and altogether extraordinary
