The Incident

Kenneth Macleod

Three lives, three turning points: this stunning debut novel charts those moments that change the course of a life for ever.

'Certainly there are ghosts in these towers. For me they are the ghosts of two children. And even now - ten years later and seven hundred miles away - I still wake most nights with the muffled echo of their cries in my ears and the weight of their deaths on my conscience...'

Three lives; three turning points. Craig was a teenage lifeguard on a beach in Germany when two children died on his watch. It should never have happened. He was an expert swimmer. His grandfather, Gordon McInnes, was on board a ship torpedoed during the war. He survived by clinging to the body of one of his colleagues. Years later, he met a member of the crew of the U-boat that attacked his ship. Gerd is a refugee of the Cold War. Recruited by the Stasi at a very young age, he escaped to the west after his mission went terribly wrong. He never went back.

THE INCIDENT is a searingly powerful novel about fate, about those moments that change the course of a life for ever. It is also a book about history, from the Second World War through to the current day, and the way incidents long past can reverberate across generations.