«Gorgeously written and with characters, who will stay with us for the rest of our lives – the eagerly awaited novel by the author of «The English Patient» and «Anil’s Ghost».»

It is the 1970s in Northern California. A farmer and his teenage daughters, Anna and Claire, work the land with the help of Coop, the enigmatic young man who lives with them. Theirs is a makeshift family, until they are riven by an incident of violence — of both hand and heart. Written in the sensuous prose for which Michael Ondaatje's fiction is celebrated, Divisadero is the work of a master story-teller.

The final curtain is closing on the Second World War, and Hana, a nurse, stays behind in an abandoned Italian villa to tend to her only remaining patient. Rescued by Bedouins from a burning plane, he is English, anonymous, damaged beyond recognition and haunted by his memories of passion and betrayal. The only clue Hana has to his past is the one thing he clung on to through the fire — a copy of The Histories by Herodotus, covered with hand-written notes describing a painful and ultimately tragic love affair.