About the Author

Bernice Rubens was born is Wales and worked as both a writer and a film maker. She is the winner of the Booker Prize for The Elected Member, and was shortlisted for the same prize for a subsequent novel: A Five Year Sentence. She died in 2004.

Reviews

She has a large compassion, and an intelligence which makes her compulsively readable. - NEW STATESMANSplendidly sane, compassionate and often grotesquely funny. - DAILY TELEGRAPHThe writing sparkles and flickers and blazes. - JEWISH CHRONICLEThe novel moves from intense emotion to humour and pathos to the frightening realisation that those who are surrounded by the insane quickly become insane themselves. Read it. - DARTS