Bridge of Clay

THE EPIC NEW NOVEL FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE BOOK THIEF. If The Book Thief was a novel that allowed Death to steal the show... [its] brilliantly illuminated follow-up is affirmatively full of life. Warm and heartfelt... This is a tale of love, art and redemption; rowdy and joyous, with flashes of wit and insight, and ultimately moving. Bridge of Clay is one of those monumental books that can draw you across space and time.

Here is a story told inside out and back to front. Five Dunbar brothers are living – fighting, loving, grieving – in the perfect chaos of a house without grown-ups. Today, the father who left them has just walked right back in. He has a surprising request: Who will build a bridge with him?

It is Clay, a boy tormented by a long-buried secret, who accepts. But why is Clay so broken? And why must he fulfil this extraordinary challenge?

Bridge of Clay is about a boy caught in a current, a boy intent on destroying everything he has in order to become everything he needs to be. Ahead of him lies the bridge, the vision that will save both his family and himself. It will be a miracle and nothing less.

At once an existential riddle and a search for redemption, this tale of five brothers coming of age in a house with no rules brims with energy, joy and pathos. Written in Markus Zusak's distinctive style, it is a tour de force from a master storyteller of the heart.