Showing Seven Lies by James Lasdun

Paperback. Pub Date: 2007 Pages: 208 in Publisher: Random House Uk Ltd. Part political withthriller part meditation on the nature of desire and betrayal. The Seven Lies tells the story of Stefan Vogel a young man growing up in the former East Germany. whose yearnings for love. glory and freedom express themselves in a lifelong fantasy of going to America. The hopeless son of an ambitious mother and a kind but unlucky diplomat. Stefan lurches between his budding. covert interests - girls and Romantic poetry - to find himself emoiled in dissident politics. which oddly seems to offer both. In time. by a series of blackly comic and increasingly dangerous manoeuvres. he contrives to make his fantasy come true. finding himself not only in the country of his dreams. but also married to the woman he idolises. America seems everything he expected. and meanwhile his secrets are safely...