The Mermaid and the drunks

'With so many modern novelists writing about not very much, Ben Richards is unusual.

This is a book that makes you sit up and think'

Ronan Bennett

Fresia Castillo's father left Chile smuggled in the boot of a car; her mother crossed the Andes by bus with two small children. Fresia, a photographer, has lived all of her life in Britain but following the death of her father, she returns to the country of her birth to seek out a new life.

On the journey to Santiago she encounters Joe, a young university lecturer. When the two of them meet a wealthy and mysterious Anglo-Chilean whose nephew has inexplicably vanished from a bar, their destinies become entwined in ways which offer both new possibilities as well as heartbreak and danger.

'A poetic meditation on exile and return, but also a love story and a political thriller' Alfred Hickling, Guardian

'An absorbing read' Metro