Shortlisted for last year’s Vogel Award, this is Alice Nelson’s first novel. Maya and her husband, Joseph, are academics. She is working on Poussin, he, an archaeologist, has just taken a position at Hong Kong University. It is just a few months before the handover of Hong Kong and Joseph has joined his old mentor to research the lost tribes of the Talamakan Desert. He has become obsessed with the work and in the heady days of the changeover their research has become politically charged. For Maya the move to Hong Kong is a chance to finish her dissertation; a chance meeting with an elderly man leads her to the story of a Jewish Russian émigré, Ada Lang, and a strange and tragic love story.

As she digs out the story of Ada, she and Joseph become more and more estranged; he is consumed by his work, undertaking field trips at a moment’s notice becoming more and more disparaging about her work while becoming more convinced of his. The Last Sky, set against great social and political upheavals, is a beautiful and exotic story of relationships with many layers. Nelson writes effortlessly and her work will be worth watching.