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How to Disappear Completely,
by Stefan Demetriou

Published December 2005

ISBN 1 905315 06 6 • £7.99


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If Ruth had actually called that evening, that well-remembered final Friday as I waited for her to come home. If she had called and said “Sorry Ben, you’re too close to your brother. I feel shut out. It’s just not working for me” I’d probably be okay by now. I would have got over it. If she had called to say, “I’m really sorry Ben, but I’ve fallen in love with someone else, I’m leaving you” then I almost certainly wouldn’t be over it, but at least I would know.

Only she never called.

How To Disappear Completely is a caustically humorous take on love and loss in our new century. Set against the gilded world of men's lifestyle magazines in London and the incestuous ex-pat oil industry of Israel, it tells the story of identical twin brothers Ben and Martin.

Ben is struggling to come to terms with the pivotal and unexplained disappearance of his wife Ruth, a shattering event that has removed all direction from his life.

As he begins to piece his professional and personal life back together, his story is paralleled with the unravelling world and marriage of his twin. With Ruth – the novel's central, but absent, character – haunting both of them, Ben and Martin are inevitably destined to collide.

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