A Best Book of the Year choice by: The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post (Jonathan Yardley) • The San Francisco Chronicle • New York Magazine • The Globe & Mail • Slate

Sir Edward Feathers has progressed from struggling young barrister to wealthy expatriate lawyer to distinguished retired judge living out his last days in comfortable seclusion in Dorset. The engrossing and moving account his life, from birth in colonial Malaya, to Wales, where he is sent as a “Raj orphan,” to Oxford, his career and marriage, encapsulates a large part of the 20th century.

'Every character is marvelously intricate and sated with lop-sided, yet sane identities.'—Michele Zackeim, SVA's Summer Reading Friday Picks