From the Baillie Gifford Prize-winning and Sunday Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing - a stunning story of corruption and tragedy in one of the world''s great cities: London. ''One of those authors I will always read, no matter what the subject matter . . . a masterclass in compelling narrative non-fiction'' - The Guardian on Empire of Pain In 2019, a London teenager, Zac Brettler, mysteriously fell to his death from a luxury apartment building on the banks of the Thames. When his grieving parents began their desperate quest to understand how their son had died, they made a terrible discovery: Zac had been leading a fantasy life, posing as the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch. In his inimitably gripping and forensic prose, Baillie Gifford Prize winner and New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe follows Zac''s parents on a dark journey to find out what brought Zac to the balcony that night - and how a teenager''s world of make-believe drew him into the city''s terrifying underworld. London Falling is at once a devastating family tragedy, a riveting story of greed, power and deception, and an indictment of the culture that has transformed London into a haven for the malignant forces that have come to influence us all.

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Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search For Truth, the bestsellers Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction), Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks (a collection of his New Yorker stories), and Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (named one of the 20 Best Books of the 21st Century by the New York Times and now streaming as a limited series on Disney+), as well as two critically acclaimed books, The Snakehead and Chatter. He is the writer and host of the eight-part podcast Wind of Change, which The Guardian named the #1 podcast of 2020, and the recipient of the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. He lives in New York.

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**THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES No.1 BESTSELLER

'A defining book of our time' - The Times
'The master of the non-fiction narrative' - The Sunday Times
'A masterpiece' - The Observer
'Compulsive' - The Guardian
'Exquisite . . . a masterpiece' Financial Times
'Breathtaking' - Jon Ronson
'Completely engrossing' - Louis Theroux
'Phenomenal' - Emily Maitlis
'More addictive than any box set' - Sathnam Sanghera**
**A book of the summer in The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Irish Times, The New York Times, Financial Times and The Atlantic

From the Baillie Gifford Prize-winning and Sunday Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing comes a riveting story of wealth, violence and deceit at the heart of a glittering city.**

In 2019, a London teenager, Zac Brettler, fell to his death from a luxury apartment building on the banks of the Thames. On a desperate quest to understand how their son had died, his grieving parents made a terrible discovery: Zac had been leading a fantasy life, posing as the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch.

Patrick Radden Keefe follows Zac's parents on a dark journey to find out what brought him to the balcony that night - and how a teenager's life of make-believe drew him into the city's terrifying underworld.