Chris Cleave’s novels deal with political violence and personal tragedy on both a national and a domestic scale. His first, Incendiary, about the bombing of the Arsenal football stadium, was published on July 7, 2005, the day the Islamic suicide bombers chose to bomb three tube trains and a bus in London. His second novel, The Other Hand, is about the need and greed for Nigeria’s oil.

Andrew O’Rourke, a Times columnist, and his wife Sarah, who edits an upmarket magazine, are off on a free holiday. She is having an affair and hopes the trip will heal their marriage.

They come across two young Ibo girls. All four are subjected to a cruel attack, leaving their lives changed forever. The attackers agree to save the life of the youngest girl only if Andrew has one of his fingers chopped off. Terrified, he refuses. She agrees and thereby hangs their unbearable decision.

“It started,” she tells us, “on the day we first met Little Bee and her sister on the lonely beach in Nigeria. The only souvenir I have of that first meeting is an absence where the middle finger of my left hand used to be. The amputation is quite clean. In place of my finger is a stump.”

But the amputation leaves both a real and a symbolic scar. Andrew commits suicide and she is left bereft and deeply responsible for Little Bee, whose sister is cruelly raped and killed. Bee hides in a ship bound for England.

After two years in a detention centre, where she learns English with the help of the Times, she is freed due to an administrative mix-up. With no legal papers, she finds her way on foot to Kingston, only to learn that Andrew has died and his funeral is taking place that day.

The story is told in flashbacks, as Sarah and Little Bee move from England to Nigeria where, on the beach and in new high buildings of Abuja, they are faced by the enormity of their situation. Cleave creates lurid set-pieces, like the melodramatic moment when Sarah’s heartbroken four-year-old Charlie, who dresses exclusively as Batman and only answers to that name, dives into his father’s grave.

It would be a disservice to give away the powerful conclusion of this absorbing and gutsy story, which deals convincingly with ethical and personal accountability.