Winner of the McKitterick Prize Two women in a room. `Courageous' Rachel Cusk, Guardian One is dying. `Gripping' Observer The other just sits back and watches. `Necessary' Independent For both, there is everything to lose. Surgeons are meant to save lives, but Nancy is a special kind of surgeon. When she makes a mistake in the operating theatre she is summoned to explain herself to a tribunal and is forced to consider what it means to be a doctor who has killed as well as cured. And to realise that her own redemption can only come through telling a tale that nobody wants to hear. Gabriel Weston, author of the acclaimed Direct Red: A Surgeon's Story, winner of the 2010 PEN/Ackerley Prize, has written an extraordinarily moving and powerful novel.