A barber, a chef and a portraitist are held hostage in a sparsely-furnished room, in a grand summer residence perched on a hill overlooking the capital city of a nameless hot country. They have been seized in a bloody coup to depose the President, their boss. In the city streets below them, chaos reigns.

With the old order ruined, the moral landscape ravaged and venality widespread, human relationships - personal and political, between lovers and within families - are being dissected, fought over, abandoned. As the tension builds and the story reaches its devastating climax, Blood Kin lays bare humanity's most animalistic and mercenary impulses: lust, vanity, ambition, artifice, betrayal, obsession and vengeance.

The locations are lavish, the detail is scrupulous, and the scope and themes are nothing short of Shakespearean. Blood Kin is a masterful, thrilling and deeply affecting debut.