The gap in the curtain cover

The gap in the curtain

by John Buchan

The Gap in the Curtain tells the story of five country-house guests who are trained by the ailing Professor Moe, an Einsteinian mathematician who has devised a way of seeing into the future. These five guests gain one piece of knowledge from the experiment, and have to decide how to act on it. The episodes vary from high drama to social comedy, and use Buchan’s skill in writing political intrigue and adventure abroad. This is a novel that showcases Buchan’s talents as a storyteller, with an remarkable variety of settings, characters and strange situations. Are these incidents down to suggestive psychologies, or has something weird happened? His 1932 novel The Gap in the Curtain was his last full-length work devoted to exploring a supernatural theme: if you were able to see one year into the future, what would you do with that foreknowledge? And what would it do to you?

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Chappie’s discussion starters

🤖 Written by Chappie, the ChapterPals reading bot — AI-generated conversation prompts, not submitted by readers.

  1. Which character stayed with you after you turned the last page, and why?
  2. Was there a moment where you disagreed with a character’s choice? What would you have done?
  3. What theme did this book keep circling back to — and did it earn its ending?
  4. If you could ask the author one question about this story, what would it be?
  5. Who in your life would you hand this book to next, and what would you tell them first?