The Secret Defector: A Novel

By: Clancy Sigal

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Synopsis: A passionately realized novel about an affair between a wandering American and cutting-edge female novelistClancy Sigal&’s fourth novel centers on expatriate Gus Black, a freethinker who moves to England in search of a new life. He absorbs the native culture by plunging into its dark corners. Amid the upheavals, he lands a job at Vogue, consorting with models like Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton, and commences a passionate affair with Rose O&’Malley, a brilliant writer loosely based on Sigal&’s real-life lover Doris Lessing.Set in the swinging London of the fifties and sixties, The Secret Defector is a portrait of an American on the loose striving to define himself against an alien yet oddly familiar culture. Sigal&’s frequent themes of the working class, the counterculture, and Marxism are in evidence, as is his self-deprecating wit. This quasi-autobiographical novel takes Clancy&’s trademark energy to confront the decline of the left and the rise of feminism.