‘The day after I turned fifteen, I finally discovered what I'd always known...'

Growing up in post-war Paris the sickly only child of glamorous, athletic parents, the narrator invents for himself a make-believe brother - older, stronger, and more brilliant than he can ever be.

It is only when the boy begins talking to an old family friend that he comes to realise that his imaginary sibling had a real predecessor: a halfbrother whose death in the concentration camps is part of a buried family secret that he was intended never to unearth.

This deeply moving novel is a winner of both of France's most trustworthy literary prizes - those voted for by ordinary readers: the Prix des Lectrices d'Elle and the Prix Goncourt des Lyceens.

Check out an extract from Secret? taken from newbooks issue 44.