What would you think if your husband, one day, with no word or explanation or warning, completely vanished? When would you begin to panic - the first hour, the first night? Or the moment you realise you cannot even remember his face?‘Although My Phantom Husband is very short, its description of the wife’s descent into an hallucinatory madness made it a more absorbing read than many novels twice the length. It has been marvellously translated from the French by Helen Stevenson and reads much like an extended prose poem; every word and cadence can be savoured.’ The Times