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Secret Son
Secret Son
Dec 30, 2025 8:25 AM

Author:Laila Lalami

Secret Son

When a young man is given the chance to rewrite his future, he doesn't realize the price he will pay for giving up his past...

Casablanca's stinking alleys are the only home that nineteen-year-old Youssef El-Mekki has ever known. Raised by his mother in a one-room home, he dreams of escape - until, one day, the father he thought dead turns out to be very much alive, and whisks him from the slums into the luxurious life of Casablanca's elite. But as he leaves the poverty of his childhood behind him, he comes up against a starkly un-glittering reality...

Reviews

An extraordinary début

—— Sunday Express

A minor masterpiece

—— Time Out

Boyne should be congratulated for his spirited take on an old theme

—— Guardian

Boyne is a skilful storyteller, expertly weaving differing stories together

—— Sunday Tribune

A great novel ... It widens our own humanity

—— Guardian

There's no funnier monster in modern literature than poor, doomed Humbert Humbert. Going to hell in his company would always be worth the ride

—— Independent

Redeeming, spendid, headlong, endlessly comic and evocative

—— John Updike

Rapturous ... incendiary

—— Time Out

Warmed by the tender characterisation that has made Jilly Cooper a national treasure

—— Countrylife

Just the thing for a wet winter weekend

—— Independent

Unrivalled joy

—— Tatler

A classic romp through the world of horse racing. Guilty pleasures rarely come as delicious as this

—— Elle

Jilly's descriptions of the glorious Cotswold countryside are some of the most lyrical ever written and her comedies of manners rival Nancy Mitford, if not Jane Austen

—— Daily Mail

As plots go you can't get more charming than this

—— Daily Express

The narrative zips along, pierced with her characteristically brilliant ear for dialogue and empathy for human relationships of all kinds... You won't be able to put it down once you get going

—— Daily Mail

A rollicking fantasy

—— Horse and Hound

I loved it

—— Rosie Boycott

Sit back and enjoy the ride as the queen of the bonkbuster, Jilly Cooper, delivers another fabulously entertaining saga

—— Good Housekeeping

Sharp, funny and touching

—— Times Literary Supplement

The Spoiler - set in the halcyon days before phone hacking - was one of the funniest and sharpest fleet street novels in years.

—— David Robson , Sunday Telegraph Seven

McAfee - herself a former journalist - evokes two distinct eras and styles of journalism, that of fearless frontline reportage and that of its successor: style-oriented, celebrity-obsessed features coverage... This is a pacy read that leaves little doubt in the reader's mind that one school of journalism deserves more mourning than the other

—— Alex Clark , Guardian

Marvellous satire...the novel is cunningly plotted and satisfyingly nuanced

—— Independent on Sunday

If the peek into the world of newspaper journalism afforded by the Leveson inquiry has you gasping for more, then this timely paperback release is perfect...a fiendishly funny (and frighteningly plausible) world of fiddled expenses and suspect tactics

—— Shortlist

Thoroughly enjoyable behind-the-scenes expose of an ambitious celebrity journalist's attempt to nail the scoop of her life

—— Metro

This is the paperback edition. The hardback appeared before the News Corporation bosses were dragged into the Commons. McAfee was either very prescient or close to the action, holding her fictional hacks to account for printing false stories gleaned from disreputable sources

—— Julia Fernandez , Time Out
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