The scapegoat

John, an English historian on holiday in France, meets a stranger who looks exactly like him: Jean de Gué, a French count. After a night of drinking, John wakes to find his double gone and his clothes taken, and he is mistaken for the count by the household. He is drawn into the life of a decaying family, with its business troubles, relatives and secrets. The novel is a tense story of identity and responsibility, asking what a person might become if given another life.