Sebastian has long been haunted by the disappearance of his father, Jack Messenger: celebrated travel writer, potential spy and murder victim, his absent presence and equivocal past continue to cast inescapable shadows over his son, who must also contend with his aging mother’s fragmented memory and his own dereliction of a partner. So who is the stranger that buttonholes Sebastian at an academic conference on the Welsh coast, and reveals lies and transgressions neither outgrown nor comprehended? How does he know Sebastian, and what are his connections to Jack Messenger? Equivocator, in a story that stretches from Egypt to Germany, from Iran’s Zagros Mountains to the Gower coastline, is a study of fathers and sons, lovers and betrayers, loss and recovery, and combines dark fable, satire and a love story in its pursuit of the question: can Sebastian find his own salvation, despite the inheritance from his father?

Stevie Davies is Professor of Creative Writing at Swansea University. Stevie is both a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the Welsh Academy. Her latest novel, Awakening, published by Parthian in 2013, was her twelfth. Stevie has won numerous awards for her fiction, and has been long-listed for the Booker and Orange Prizes. Several of her books have been adapted into radio and screenplays. She writes for the Guardian and Independent newspapers, and is a passionate sea-swimmer, cyclist and walker on the Gower.