Rarely does a debut novel attract the sweeping critical acclaim of Ceridwen Dovey's Blood Kin . Shortlisted for two prestigious awards, this tale centers around a military coup in an unnamed country, with characters who have no names or any identifying physical characteristics. Known simply as the ex-President's chef, barber, and portrait painter, these three men perform their mundane tasks and appear unaware of the atrocities of their employer's regime. But when the President is deposed, the trio are revealed as less than innocent. A deeply chilling yet sensual novel, Blood Kin illustrates Lord Acton's famous quip, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely," and marks the beginning of an illustrious literary career. "A precise and terrifying debut novel." - The New York Times Book Review "Dovey's surgical prose and cool apprehension of the machinations of ambition and lust make her a writer to watch." - O, The Oprah Magazine "Taut and remarkably self-assured first novel . . . there's a knowing sensuality to the novel's sparsely lyric passages." - Los Angeles Times Ceridwen Dovey's debut novel, Blood Kin , is being published in thirteen countries. She grew up in South Africa and Australia, and now lives in New York City. His Portraitist I should have known, at the last sitting, that something was wrong. The President had changed color—every fiber of him was a tone I hadn’t mixed on my palette before—and he scratched around on the settee like a fussy poodle making its nest for the night and wouldn’t sit still. He brought his bodyguards up to the studio when normally they waited in the foyer of my apartment building, and his assistant even forgot to collect the petals. My wife was in the bath, the first ritual of her day, lying dead still, with just her belly protruding, and watching the baby’s movements ripple the water. She could lie there for hours, transfixed. The bodyguards were shot with silenced guns. They simply crumpled where they stood, like puppets a child has lost interest in. The President’s assistant, without a word, opened my wardrobe, stepped into it and closed the mirrored door behind him quietly. It was only then that I saw them: two masked gunmen, slick as spiders, with their weapons trained on the President. I dropped my palette and raised my hands in supplication. I could hear my wife murmuring in the bathroom. They motioned for me to move to the President’s side. I sat next to him on the couch, our shoulders touching, with one gunman behind us, while the other moved towards the bathroom door. “Please.” I only realized later that I whispered this. “Please. Not her.” He opened the door and for a few seconds stood watching her. I could see into the room from the couch. She didn’t turn her head; she thought it was me. The gunman lifted her roughly from the bath in one movement and she stood naked, barefoot on the bathroom floor, screaming my name. “Put on your dressing gown,” I whispered. “Behind the door. Put it on.” The silk clung to her and darkened around her breasts and stomach as she clutched the gown strings around her waist. The gunman forced her to walk in front of him, and as she approached me and the President sitting on the settee she dropped to her knees. He pulled her up again just as she was reaching out her arms to me. I strained for hers, but she only managed to grasp the President’s hand. She screamed my name but clutched his hand, then she was gone, forced down the stairs and out of the foyer. The assistant wasn’t discovered. I wonder if he is still hiding in my closet. Now we are being held prisoner in one of the guestrooms of the President’s Summer Residence—me, his chef and his barber—in a room too high above the ground to contemplate escape. We each have a bed with virgin linen so white I feel guilty sleeping in it, and there is an en-suite bathroom with silver fittings. A man brings bread, water, cheese and tomatoes to our door in the mornings and soup in the evenings. I haven’t seen my wife since the day they took us, almost a week ago. I was the first prisoner to be left in the room. They blind-folded me and the President in my apartment, forced us into a vehicle, and drove into the mountains—I know those spiraling roads too well to be fooled; the air thins and you start to drive faster from light-headedness, to overtake and stay for longer than you need to on the wrong side of the road. Those roads bring out the death wish in people. The President and I leaned into each other as the driver took the corners; his body is more pliable than I imagined. We were separated at the Summer Residence—our blindfolds were removed and he was led away into the building, which I recognized immediately from postcards and magazine spreads; it was declared a national monument last year. I was led up many flights of stairs to the bedroom and left alone. The chef was brought in the afternoon, straight from the President’s kitchens, where they were in the middle of making zabag