The Missing Shade of Blue

Of French and Scottish parentage, Edgar has come to Edinburgh from Paris to work on a French edition of Hume's essays, flat-swapping with a Scottish academic writing a book on Sartre ("no doubt in my mind as to who had got the better deal"). While in Edinburgh he is sucked into the orbit of a charismatic, self-hating philosopher, Harry Sanderson, and his enigmatic artist wife, Carrie. Edgar has "always worked on the principle that a translator is a guest in somebody else's house"; as he listens to both versions of the breakdown of their marriage, he realises that he is a guest in Harry and Carrie's city, their language and their lives, and begins to wonder why he has never fully occupied his own.