1957, and Lewis Aldridge is travelling back to his home in the South of England. He is straight out of jail and nineteen years old. His return will trigger the implosion not just of his family, but of a whole community. A decade earlier, his father's homecoming casts a different shape. The war is over and Gilbert has recently been demobbed. He reverts easily to suburban life - cocktails at six thirty, church on Sundays - but his wife and young son resist the stuffy routine. Lewis and his mother escape to the woods for picnics, just as they did in wartime days. Nobody is surprised that Gilbert's wife counters convention, but they are all shocked when, after one of their jaunts, Lewis comes back without her. Not far away, Kit Carmichael keeps watch. She has always understood more than most, not least from what she has been dealt by her own father's hand. Lewis' grief and burgeoning rage are all too plain, and Kit makes a private vow to help. But in her attempts to set them both free, she fails to predict the painful and horrifying secrets that must first be forced into the open.

As menacing as it is beautiful, "The Outcast" is a devastating portrait of small-town hypocrisy from an astonishing new voice.

賽迪•瓊斯

齣生於倫敦，父親是牙買加裔詩人及劇作傢，母親是演員，自幼在充滿創造與想象力的環境中成長。當朋友們忙著在大學玩樂時，她已曆經各種工作磨練。浪跡天涯後迴到倫敦安定下來，結婚並育有兩個小孩，從事電影劇本寫作。本書是她的第一部小說，一齣版即深獲好評，在文壇上獲奬無數。

版權銷售21國，英美熱賣過100萬

蟬聯紐約時報、泰晤士報各大暢銷書榜

2008年“理查德與硃蒂”讀書俱樂部夏季選書

2008年柯思達小說奬新銳作傢奬

2008年柑橘文學奬決選作品