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Anna Devine, a young New Zealand painter living in London, has two chance encounters that set her on a search for answers. Can she really 'see' her new city properly? Can she reconcile family life and art? Her search leads her into past mysteries of her troubled family and her brother's death, and towards future complexities: infidelity, dangerous freedoms, and a whole new eye on her foreign city. In Auckland, in another time, Justine Devantier is reading a novel in order to find out about its author - and possibly about herself. And in a fictional city a man looks for a woman he knew long ago. At the core of this intricate plot is British novelist Richard Black, who may hold the strands that bind all the protagonists together. Grimshaw's brilliantly drawn characters walk through her foreign cities in different guises. She gives us a 'true' story, a fiction, a love story, a story of family connections lost and found, and a dazzling ride through the creative process - its practitioners, its casualties.Reviewers' comments on Provocation, Charlotte Grimshaw's debut novel: 'Darkly compelling Gillian Slovo 'Atmospheric, intelligent and seductively strange - Sarah Dunant 'Rarely has there been a more stylish and assured debut in New Zealand fiction' - Grace (Stephen Stratford) 'Provocation is a compelling read, and Grimshaw's prose is magnificent. First fiction just doesn't get any better than this.' - Irish Examiner