Lily falls in love with Sam the minute she sets eyes on him. It takes Sam a day or two longer. Curious, because Lily – independent, headstrong, rational – has never quite believed in love; while Sam – confident, passionate, romantic – thought he understood it inside out.

Lily is an award-winning television documentary maker. Sam is an award-winning playwright. Both are in relationships that have quietly expired, but their encounter makes Lily and Sam come alive again. As they begin to work together on the page and on screen, an affair takes hold that they are powerless to resist.

Arriving in mid-life, their relationship opens unexpected new worlds and, for Lily, offers her a surprising form of liberation. But what will happen to them when familiarity, illness and age begin to take their toll? What will survive? Taking us to the edge of desire, love and betrayal across a lifetime, What Will Survive of Us reveals what is left of us when we strip away every layer.

HOWARD JACOBSON

Howard Jacobson has written sixteen novels and five works of non-fiction. He won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award in 2000 for The Mighty Walzer and then again in 2013 for Zoo Time. In 2010 he won the Man Booker Prize for The Finkler Question; he was also shortlisted for the prize in 2014 for J.