Akin is a tender tale of love, loss and family, from Emma Donoghue, the international bestselling author of Room.

'If Room forced home truths on us, about parenthood, responsibility and love, Akin deals with similar subject matter more subtly, but in the end just as compellingly' - Guardian

A retired New York professor’s life is thrown into chaos when he takes his great-nephew to the French Riviera, in hopes of uncovering his own mother's wartime secrets.

Noah is only days away from his first trip back to Nice since he was a child when a social worker calls looking for a temporary home for Michael, his eleven-year-old great-nephew. Though he has never met the boy, he gets talked into taking him along to France.

This odd couple, suffering from jet lag and culture shock, argue about everything from steak haché to screen time, and the trip is looking like a disaster. But as Michael helps Noah unearth troubling details about their family’s past, they find they are more akin than they knew.

Akin is a funny, heart-wrenching tale of an old man and a boy who unpick their painful story and start to write a new one together.

'Poignant and hopeful, the bestselling novelist of Room has delivered another exquisite portrayal of an adult and child making their way in the world' – Woman & Home

An important, touching novel that stays with you long after you’re done reading it * Independent *
Highly emotional but never sentimental * Vogue *
If Room forced home truths on us, about parenthood, responsibility and love, Akin deals with similar subject matter more subtly, but in the end just as compellingly . . . This is a quietly moving novel that shows us how little we know one another, but how little, perhaps, we need to know in order to care * Guardian *
Akin offers a subtle, entertaining portrait of the relationship — and friction — between age and youth * The Economist *
Poignant and hopeful, the bestselling novelist of Room has delivered another exquisite portrayal of an adult and child making their way in the world * Woman & Home *
A highly enjoyable novel * Daily Mail *
Absorbing. I loved the growing relationship between the two * Prima *
Sweet, tender and defiantly unsentimental, this is a sad, funny look at how flawed, fragile people develop a sense of belonging * Psychologies *
A delicate and moving reminder of the way in which our human stories are made from practical choices – often in life as well as in literature * Harper's Bazaar *
Heartwarming and humourous * Radio Times *
We are never too old, Donoghue reminds us, to emerge from our childish dusks. What begins as a larky story of unlikely male bonding turns into an off-center but far richer novel about the unheralded, imperfect heroism of two women - Michael's incarcerated mother and Noah's long deceased one - and the way we preserve the past and prepare for the future * New York Times *
Soul stirring * O Magazine *
Captivating . . . There is a lyrical, mesmerizing quality to the storytelling . . . It is the complex and soulful characters Donoghue creates that are most memorable in this novel * Times Literary Supplement *
Akin spans continents and centuries, stretching the bonds that link children, parents and grandparents to breaking point * Times *
Like Room, which featured a boy and his mother held captive, Akin shows Donoghue's interest in the mind of a child, in this case that of Michael, an 11-year-old from a tough part of Brooklyn * Sunday Times *
Touching * The Mail on Sunday *

Born in Dublin in 1969, Emma Donoghue is an Irish emigrant twice over: she spent eight years in Cambridge doing a PhD in eighteenth-century literature before moving to London, Ontario, where she lives with her partner and their two children. She also migrates between genres, writing literary history, biography, stage and radio plays as well as fairy tales and short stories. She is best known for her novels, which range from the historical (Frog Music, Slammerkin, Life Mask, Landing, The Sealed Letter and The Wonder) to the contemporary (Stir-Fry, Hood, Landing). Her international bestseller Room was a New York Times Best Book of 2010 and was a finalist for the Man Booker, Commonwealth, and Orange Prizes.