First published in 1970, Robertson Davies' Fifth Business is the first volume of the Deptford Trilogy, but can be read as a standalone novel. The title refers to the idea of a person being neither hero or heroine, confidante nor villain, but still being a vital part of a plot — without them the denouement or resolution would not happen. And that is the perfect description of the role with which our narrator, Dunstan "Dunny" Ramsay, fulfills — he is the "fifth business".

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