The Clothes on Their Backs

Shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize, and set against the backdrop of a London from the 1950s to the present day, "The Clothes on Their Backs" is a wise and tender novel about the clothes we choose to wear, the personalities we dress ourselves in, and about how they define us all.

In a red brick mansion block off the Marylebone Road, Vivien, a sensitive, bookish girl grows up sealed off from both past and present by her timid refugee parents.

Then one morning a glamorous uncle appears, dressed in a mohair suit, with a diamond watch on his wrist and a girl in a leopard-skin hat on his arm.

Why is Uncle Sandor so violently unwelcome in her parents' home?

This is a novel about survival - both banal and heroic - and a young woman who discovers the complications, even betrayals, that inevitably accompany the fierce desire to live.

This recording is unabridged. Typically abridged audiobooks are not more than 60 per cent of the author's work and as low as 30 per cent with characters and plot lines removed.