Esther, an Amer­i­can art con­ser­va­tor, has fled New York for Lon­don — part­ly to escape her fail­ing mar­riage, part­ly to tend to her dying moth­er. On her first night there, she spots a young man return­ing home very late, wet and mud­dy, to the house next door. Their eyes con­nect and he dis­ap­pears inside.

This first encounter sparks Esther’s curios­i­ty about her new neigh­bors: Amir, the moody col­lege stu­dent she caught sneak­ing in, and, more intrigu­ing still, Amir’s father, Javad — a neu­ro­sci­en­tist from Iran.

Through­out the spring, a ten­ta­tive friend­ship blos­soms, but when ter­ror­ists attack London’s tube and bus lines in July, Esther finds her rela­tion­ship with Javad strained by her gnaw­ing sus­pi­cions about Amir … sus­pi­cions that will ulti­mate­ly upend the pos­si­bil­i­ties for the future, and reveal the deep stamp of the past.

Sweep­ing, sus­pense­ful, and exquis­ite­ly writ­ten, Under­ground Fugue is a pow­er­ful tes­ta­ment to how human con­nec­tion can sur­vive history’s most fear­some echoes.