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''Vintage Simenon, a dark masterpiece . . . eerily prophetic'' John Banville, Guardian

''It''s not because you''re foreigners. It''s because you aren''t foreign enough . . . or else that you are too foreign''

Just as the Krull house sits on the edge of a rural French town, the family occupies a marginal place in the life of the community around them. Snubbed by the locals despite having lived there for decades, they rely on trade with passing sailors to earn a living. When their relative arrives unannounced from Germany, with his unsettling, nonchalant ways, the family becomes the target of increasing suspicion and the scapegoat for a terrible crime.

Written on the eve of the Second World War, The Krull House is a taut, strangely prophetic novel about how distrust and hostility towards outsiders descends into hate-filled violence.

''Simenon lays out with ruthless exactitude the way selfish, conscience-free greed exploits modest, hospitable decency . . . The world of Chez Krull is a common, shared one'' Julian Barnes, London Review of Books