This is a curious one. Louis de Bernières relates a brief romantic misunderstanding, during the 1979 winter of discontent, between Chris, a middle-aged salesman, and Roza, a young, supposedly Yugoslavian woman, whom he mistakes for a streetwalker while driving in north London. She is, in fact, she tells us, dressed up like a tart, “play-acting . . . showing off my legs”, just to see what happens. Between you and me, I think she might be bad news.

Especially for dull, shy Chris, married to one of those wives who stop bothering. He has no experience of prostitutes, but is so instantly attracted to Roza that, in a moment of madness, he pulls over. Roza, amused, says she’s packed it in, so no deal, but she lets him give her a lift home.

Hopelessly infatuated, he keeps calling round to her scruffy shared house and she tells him stories about her childhood in Yugoslavia, her teenage lesbian phase, and the fact that she slept with her father and quite liked it. That’s got his attention. She moves on to all her later lovers, then the time she worked in a hostess bar and was abducted and gang-raped for days by a rogue client and his mates. She shows Chris the cigar burn on her upper arm, “the size of a shilling”, left over from the rape thing. It never occurs to Chris that it is probably one of those old-fashioned vaccination scars. But the reader may well feel that the novel consists largely of lies, which seems to be de Bernières’s point – that fiction can be like a certain kind of bad love affair, writer manipulating reader like girl manipulating boy, with delayed revelations and deferred gratification, the big tease.

Why does Roza need to read up on Yugoslavian history at the library? Why does she imitate cockney so well and know so much about Princess Margaret? We can only guess. She is, we suspect, no straighter with us than she is with Chris. When she tells a story in one of her self-narrated chapters, it tends to begin, “I told Chris . . .”, which is almost a disclaimer.

Chris says, “I felt diminished when Roza told me about her romantic experiences. I think perhaps she didn’t realise how much I wanted her.” Of course she realises. She says, “It was fun tormenting him a little,” meaning a lot. She genuinely likes him, but that is why she torments him. Which may baffle readers. But it is a characteristic behaviour of incest survivors, the females at any rate, and perhaps the one true thing Roza says is the one about Daddy. De Bernières never spoils the ambiguity by making it clear.

Roza’s car-mechanic flatmate, who knows all her stories, simply shrugs them off. He advises poor Chris, “People tell stories to make themselves more interesting.” The chunks of Yugoslavian history are quite tiring, actually. But this sad, strange fable still has a resonance.

A Partisan’s Daughter by Louis de Bernières
Harvill Secker £16.99 pp212

Louis de Bernières is at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival on Friday, April 4, at 6pm; to book, contact www.ticketsoxford.com.

A Partisan’s Daughter is available at the Sunday Times Books First price of £15.29 (inc p&p) on 0870 165 8585

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