'Salute the liars - they can make the real world disappear and a fresh world take its place...' Set in a coastal Stone Age village at the advent of bronze, Jim Crace's second novel, published for the first time in Penguin paperback, is marked by astonishing poetic resonance and daring imagination. As the stories of the narrators unfold, conflicting truths are revealed - truths which deal with contemporary issues of work, love, lying and forces of change.