Restless

In December, 2012 The Sundance Channel will air the BBC-produced film RESTLESS starring Charlotte Rampling, Michael Gambon, Hayley Atwell, and Rufus Sewell, based on this novel by William Boyd.

Someone is trying to kill Sally Gilmartin. It is the summer of 1976, and the only person she can trust is her daughter, Ruth, a young single mother struggling with her own demons. Now Sally must tell her daughter the truth: She is actually Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian emigre recruited for the British Secret Service in 1939. Soon Ruth is drawn deeper into the astonishing events of her mother’s past, including her work in New York City manipulating the press in order to shift public sentiment toward U.S. involvement in Second World War and her dangerous love affair with another spy. Ruth also discovers that her mother has one final assignment. This time, though, Eva can’t do it alone—she needs Ruth’s help. Full of tension and drama, emotion and history, this is storytelling at its finest.

William Boyd is the author of eight novels, including A Good Man in Africa and Any Human Heart, three collections of short stories, and thirteen screenplays that have been filmed. He has been the recipient of many awards, including the 2006 Costa (formerly Whitbread) Novel Award, the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. He lives with his wife in London and southwest France.