Debut author: Francesca Segal

Rather in the manner of Zadie Smith in On Beauty , Francesca Segal has, for her debut, The Innocents (Chatto), sought inspiration from a classic early-20th-century work of fiction: Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence . Segal, 31, a former debut novel columnist for the Observer , reread Wharton's book while living in New York a few years ago. Certain aspects of its privileged but constrictive milieux, she says, reminded her of her own upbringing in north-west London's Jewish community. And so she decided to relocate Wharton's tale to modern-day Hampstead, while altering aspects of plot and character and ending with a "very different message". The result is a subtle, witty and acutely observed study of a narrow but very recognisable world. Segal says that she hopes the novel "transcends" its context and will be relevant to anyone from a community where "lives are lived in proximity". She says that one early reader, a Muslim, wrote to her and said: "You've described my life."