Emaciated and barely recognizable, Ivo has died in hospital. Neither his mother nor his oldest friend, Nicholas, can fathom the malnourished state he was admitted in. In the house Ivo shared with a shifting group of men and women in need - people to whom he offered unconditional refuge - there are expressions of gratitude and professions of love, but no adequate explanation. His self-denial, they insist, was deliberate.

In the aftermath of Ivo's death, Nicholas carefully reconstructs their friendship and Ivo's unusual life. He recalls a precocious adolescence marked by intellectual intensity and unusual moral seriousness, and a restless early adulthood shaped by failed artistic pursuits. While Ivo becomes ever more reclusive, his fascination with visionaries and those who submit themselves to rigorous forms of belief continues to grow. This obsession culminates in the ambitious staging of an immersive theatrical spectacle in the village of San Leo, Italy, an attempt to fuse art, belief and renunciation into a single, total work.

The Fall of Alba is an intriguing, brilliantly artful novel, at once a ruminative exploration of compassion, suffering and performance, and a compelling story of the encounters that shape a life, confirming Jonathan Buckley as one of the most searching British novelists of our time.