The Hidden »

Tobias Hill's collection of short stories, Skin (1997), won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award, and he has twice been short-listed for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. The author of The Love of Stones, Hill is the Royal Society of Literature Fellow at Sussex University and lives in London.

In southern Greece in 2004, a close-knit group of archaeologists searches for the buried traces of a formidable ancient power. A student running from a failed marriage and family, Ben Mercer is a latecomer to their ranks, drawn to the charisma of the group's members—to the double-edged friendship of Jason, the unsettling beauty of Natsuko and Eleschen, and the menace of Max and Eberhard. But Ben is far too eager to join the excavation project, and there is more to the group's dangerous games and dynamic than he understands. And there are things that should always remain hidden.

A novel of astonishing grace and power from award-winning author Tobias Hill, The Hidden brilliantly explores the secrets we keep, the ties that bind us, and the true cost of fulfilling our desires.

The New York Times - Maria Russo

The Hidden is Hill's fourth novel…and like his previous novels, it's an unusual, exhilarating hybrid of high-stakes, propulsive narrative; erudite yet breezy summations of specialized historical data; and strikingly evocative language…the novel's ideas are explored with stylish rigor and a rare boldness made all the more powerful by its surprising lyricism. The setting and many of the themes in The Hidden call to mind Don DeLillo's novel The Names, but where DeLillo suggests a glamour inherent in obfuscation and enigma, Hill dismantles that whole notion.