NATIONAL BESTSELLER • BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • From the bestselling author of The Sense of an Ending comes an “extraordinary … first rate” novel ( The New York Times Book Review ) that follows the lives of two very different British men and explores the grand tapestry of late-Victorian Britain.As boys, George, the son of a Midlands vicar, and Arthur, living in shabby genteel Edinburgh, find themselves in a vast and complex world at the heart of the British Empire. Years later—one struggling with his identity in a world hostile to his ancestry, the other creating the world’s most famous detective while in love with a woman who is not his wife—their fates become inextricably connected.