From bestselling author John Boyne comes a gripping and profound exploration of responsibility, guilt, blame, trauma, and our capacity for redemption.

🏅Winner: the Prix du Roman FNAC (France)

🏅Longlisted for the Prim Femina Roman Étranger (France)

🏅(Water) Longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Award

🏅(Earth) Longlisted for the Polari Prize (UK)

In The Elements, acclaimed novelist John Boyne has created a kaleidoscope of four interconnected narratives, each representing a different perspective on crime from the points of view of the enabler, the accomplice, the perpetrator, and the victim.

From a mother on the run from her past, to a young soccer star on trial and a successful surgeon grappling with childhood trauma, and finally to a father on a transformative journey with his son, each strand combines into a tapestry of intersecting lives.

Boyne’s most ambitious work yet, The Elements is both an engrossing drama and a moving examination of why and how we allow crime to occur. In masterful, spellbinding prose, he navigates this complex subject with extraordinary empathy and unflinching honesty, at every step challenging us to confront our own conceptions of guilt and innocence.