MONSIEUR KA

(Chatto £12.99) IT OFTEN takes an emigre to describe a country most clearly, and Goldsworthy, who was born in Belgrade but has lived in London for 30 years, is proving a most accomplished poet of her adopted city.

Set during the freezing winter of 1947, her second novel is narrated by Albertine, a Jewish French escapee from the war whose new English husband has a job in Whitehall, about which she knows little.

Left home alone, she becomes the companion of a wealthy sexagenarian Russian in Chiswick whose family history provided the inspiration for Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. She soon finds herself privately writing his memoir.

The stories we tell about ourselves, and the stories people construct for us, are a major theme of this book. Some of the plot gets a bit boggy but Goldsworthy’s flavoursome immersion in her chosen setting is a delight.