Certainly there are ghosts in these towers. For me they are the ghosts of two children. And even now - ten years later and seven hundred miles away - I still wake most nights with the muffled echo of their cries in my ears and the weight of their deaths on my conscience...'

Three lives; three turning points. Craig was a teenage lifeguard on a beach in Germany when two children died on his watch. It should never have happened. He was an expert swimmer. His grandfather, Gordon McInnes, was on board a ship torpedoed during the war. He survived by clinging to the body of one of his colleagues. Years later, he met a member of the crew of the U-boat that attacked his ship. Gerd is a refugee of the Cold War. Recruited by the Stasi at a very young age, he escaped to the west after his mission went terribly wrong. He never went back.

THE INCIDENT is a searingly powerful novel about fate, about those moments that change the course of a life for ever. It is also a book about history, from the Second World War through to the current day, and the way incidents long past can reverberate across generations.

Read by Angus King

(p) 2015 Orion Publishing Group