After her arrest, interrogation and torture by the Nazis, Marian Sutro, a British intelligence agent, returns to England. Peacetime, however, is as fraught with anxiety, fear and disorientation as wartime. As Marian tries to reintegrate, the effects of her trauma pull her back to the past. The danger she feels becomes tangible when, during the cold war, she becomes entangled anew in the clandestine world of espionage.

Mawer makes Marian’s fear palpable. Her worry about returning to everyday life is sensitively set against her strength and perseverance (“Marian’s careful reconstruction of a life… creeping out into the postwar world”). Passages that repeat, in the way that memories do, combine with the sometimes fragmented language to perfectly reflect the mind under stress. Mawer is most strikingly adept when writing on the intangible: love, loss, fear, identity and nostalgia.

Tightrope is published by Little, Brown (£16.99). Click here to order it for £12.99