A tale of enormous suspense and growing horror, The Fox in the Attic is the widely acclaimed first part of Richard Hughes's monumental historical fiction, "The Human Predicament." Set in the early 1920s, the book centers on Augustine, a young man from an aristocratic Welsh family who has come of age in the aftermath of World War I. Unjustly suspected of having had a hand in the murder of a young girl, Augustine takes refuge in the remote castle of Bavarian relatives. There his hopeless love for his devout cousin Mitzi blinds him to the hate that will lead to the rise of German fascism. The book reaches a climax with a brilliant description of the Munich putsch and a disturbingly intimate portrait of Adolph Hitler.

The Fox in the Attic, like its no less remarkable sequel The Wooden Shepherdess, offers a richly detailed, Tolstoyan overview of the modern world in upheaval. At once a novel of ideas and an exploration of the dark spaces of the heart, it is a book in which the past returns in all its original uncertainty and strangeness.

理查德‧休斯(Richard Hughes) (1900-1976)，英国著名作家，1926年出版第一本小说《牙买加飓风》，此书一经出版即登上英美两国的畅销书排行榜，并获得法国费米那文学奖，从此奠定他作为经典作家的地位，此书日后更获选为20世纪百大英文小说之一。《阁楼上的狐狸》是他继《牙买加飓风》后创作的长篇巨献《人性的困惑》三部曲的第一部。