LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2016

Observer and Daily Telegraph Book of the Year 2016

David is the small boy who is always asking questions. Simon and Ines take care of him in their new town, Estrella. He is learning the language, he has begun to make friends and he has the big dog Bolivar to watch over him.

But he'll be seven soon and he should be at school. And so, David is enrolled in the Academy of Dance. It's here, in his new golden dancing slippers, that he learns how to call down the numbers from the sky. But it's here too that he will make troubling discoveries about what adults are capable of.

The Schooldays of Jesus is a mesmerising tale about growing up, and about the choices we are forced to make in our lives.