An "elegant and ingenious" (New Republic) look into the shadowy world and intimate conversations of an adulterous couple behind closed doors -- from the Pulitzer Prize winning author of American Pastoral.

"This swift, elegant, disturbing novel...stands at the extreme of contemporary fiction" --New York Times Book Review

He is a middle-aged American writer called Philip; she is an articulate, well-educated Englishwoman trapped in a loveless and humiliating marriage. In Philip's London studio, this play of voices - sharp, tender and inquiring - reveals both their past lives with startling clarity. Deception is fiendishly clever, as it dances with the conventions of the novel, and redefines the boundaries between fiction and reality.