The Krull House

<p><b>'Vintage Simenon, a dark masterpiece . . . eerily prophetic' John Banville, <i>Guardian<br></i></b><br>'<i>It's not because you're foreigners. It's because you aren't foreign enough . . . or else that you are too foreign'</i> <p>Just as the Krull house sits on the edge of a rural French town, the family occupies a marginal place in the life of the community around them. Snubbed by the locals despite having lived there for decades, they rely on trade with passing sailors to earn a living. When their relative arrives unannounced from Germany, with his unsettling, nonchalant ways, the family becomes the target of increasing suspicion and the scapegoat for a terrible crime. <p>Written on the eve of the Second World War, <i>The Krull House</i> is a taut, strangely prophetic novel about how distrust and hostility towards outsiders descends into hate-filled violence. <p><b>'Simenon lays out with ruthless exactitude the way selfish, conscience-free greed exploits modest, hospitable decency . . . The world of <i>Chez Krull</i> is a common, shared one' Julian Barnes, <i>London Review of Books </i></b></p>