The best intentions can be deadly

During a white-hot summer on the idyllic Greek island of Hydra, two girls fall into one another’s lives to devastating effect.

When Samantha, a young, impressionable American, meets Naomi, a Brit with a taste for danger, their relationship quickly takes on a special intensity. Amid the sun, sea and high society of island life, their imaginations are sparked when one day they find a young Arab man, Faoud, washed up on shore, a casualty of the crisis raging across the Aegean. But when their seemingly simple plan to help the stranger goes wrong, all must face the horrific consequences they have set in motion.

Both impossible to put down and beautifully written: a great combo -- Lionel Shriver * Observer Books of the Year *
An astute, unsentimental critique of the contemporary world in crisis... Osborne handles surface and depth with immense skill, as only great writers can do. Beautiful Animals is his most accomplished book so far -- a big, clever, crazed beast of a novel -- Deborah Levy * Financial Times *
Often almost literally bristling with menace… his Hydra is rugged with physical immediacy. Silhouetted against it, emotions fluctuate, sexual frissons flicker back and forth, destinies tremble in the balance… It’s the brilliance with which Osborne conjures all this up that leaves you eager to see where his nomadic imagination will take him next -- Peter Kemp * Sunday Times *
Osborne is a startlingly good observer of privilege, noting the rites and rituals of the upper classes with unerring precision and an undercurrent of malice * New York Times Book Review *
Osborne is a startlingly good observer of privilege, noting the rites and rituals of the upper classes with unerring precision and an undercurrent of malice… The novel takes on the tone of an existential noir, evoking writers like Jean-Patrick Manchette and Georges Simenon... An heir to Graham Greene... he shares with Greene an interest in what might be called the moral thriller * New York Times Book Review *
Complex and thrilling, Beautiful Animals confirms Osborne as one of Britain’s very best novelists -- Anthony Gardner * Mail on Sunday *
Beautiful Animals is terrifically well constructed, written with mean authority, brilliantly evocative about place … A masterpiece of disaffection -- David Sexton * Evening Standard *
Spare, subtle… brilliantly achieved -- Frances Wilson * Times Literary Supplement *
Osborne is interested in what his characters do when events are wrested out of their control, his narratives unfurling like a set of carefully lined-up dominoes… It’s exciting for sure, but cuts closer to the bone than Osborne’s previous novels and is all the more distressing and depressing for it -- Lucy Scholes * Independent *
Superlatively gripping… Osborne plunges his characters far from the luminescent surface and into the darkest depths -- Anita Sethi * i *

Born in England, Lawrence Osborne is the author of the critically acclaimed novels The Forgiven, The Ballad of a Small Player, Hunters in the Dark, Beautiful Animals, Only to Sleep: A Philip Marlowe novel (commissioned by the Raymond Chandler estate) and The Glass Kingdom. His non-fiction ranges from memoir through travelogue to essays, including Bangkok Days, Paris Dreambook and The Wet and the Dry. His short story 'Volcano' was selected for Best American Short Stories 2012.

The Forgiven, starring Ralph Fiennes, Matt Smith and Jessica Chastain, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2021; Hunters in the Dark will shoot in Cambodia with Aneurin Barnard, Adam Pettyfer and Tzi Ma; and Beautiful Animals is now in production with Amazon. Osborne lives in Bangkok.


www.lawrenceosborne.net