Colin Thubron

A house is burning. Its six tenants include a failed priest, a naturalist, a neurosurgeon and an invalid dreaming of his anxious childhood. Their landlord's relationship to them is both intimate and shadowy. At times he shares their preoccupations and memories. He will share their fate. In fire, their passions and obsessions in a dying house loom and shift, from the hallucinating drug addict in the basement to the landlord training his telescope on...