“Thrums with the momentum of a page turner … You'll think about storytelling and the 'truth' anew.” —Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Friday Black and Chain-Gang All-Stars

“A tremendous novel with a cool and engrossing narrative voice that resonates with memorable intensity and effect.” —William Boyd, author of Any Human Heart

A novel about the dangerous power of storytelling, set in motion by a chance encounter

On an overnight train from London to Edinburgh, a translator becomes engrossed in the stories of the strangers who share her compartment. One has adapted the harrowing childhood experience of an acquaintance for his controversial recent bestseller. The translator has a complicated history of her own. Over the course of a long night, the travelers share food, drink, and confidences that range across space and time, resurfacing old losses and betrayals and blurring the lines between fact and fiction.

A deft, unsettling, brilliantly orchestrated debut by a rising international star, I Made You Up Inside My Head asks how far we are allowed to borrow—and bend—the truth to our own ends.