Michael first met the Hanburys of Egypt Hill when he was a young student. He was intrigued and delighted by their bohemian lifestyle and bravado. Twelve years later, married with a young son, Michael is invited back to the house and jumps at the chance of escaping his increasingly turbulent domestic situation. But his illusions about the family are shattered as the rotten core of the Hanbury myth is gradually revealed.Intimate in its insight, epic in its emotional scope, In the Fold is a brilliant, clever, often painful story of how we can become undone by our yearning to belong.

Rachel Cusk was born in 1967 and is the author of four novels: Saving Agnes, which won the Whitbread First Novel Award, The Temporary, The Country Life, which won a Somerset Maugham Award and The Lucky Ones, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award. Her non-fiction book A Life's Work was published to huge acclaim in 2001. In 2003 she was chosen as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. She lives in Bristol.