The Ghosts Of Rome
By (Author) Joseph O'Connor
Vintage Publishing
Harvill Secker
4th February 2025
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Historical fiction
Thriller / suspense fiction
Biographical fiction / autobiographical fiction
Paperback
384
Width 153mm, Height 234mm, Spine 20mm
350g
The Contessa Giovanna Landini takes on Gestapo chief Paul Hauptmann in a daring mission in Occupied Rome February 1944. Six months since Nazi forces occupied Rome. Inside the beleaguered city, the Contessa Giovanna Landini is a member of the band of Escape Line activists known as 'The Choir'. Their mission is to smuggle refugees to safety and help Allied soldiers, all under the nose of Gestapo boss Paul Hauptmann. During a ferocious morning air raid a mysterious parachutist lands in Rome and disappears into the backstreets. Is he an ally or an imposter His fate will come to put the whole Escape Line at risk. Meanwhile, Hauptmann's attention has landed on the Contessa. As his fascination grows, she is pulled into a dangerous game with him - one where the consequences could be lethal.
Breathtakingly good writing - O'Connor puts you right there, centre stage in the story and never lets you go -- Peter James, on My Father's House
O'Connor is on stellar form with this ensemble thriller...an expert storyteller * Daily Mail, on My Father's House *
A masterwork... so urgent, so incredibly alive... A searing and beautiful example of storytelling's infinite importance * Donal Ryan, on My Father's House *
Impressive and pleasurable...evokes a city in peril with wonderful vitality * Financial Times, on My Father's House *
A literary thriller of the highest order...his razor-sharp dialogue is to be savoured, and he employs dark humour to great effect. The plot twists keep on coming * Observer, on My Father's House *
Joseph O'Connor's fiction has been published in forty languages. His twenty books include eleven novels, among them the million-selling Star of the Sea, Ghost Light, Shadowplay and My Father's House, a Washington Post Book of the Year. His work has been shortlisted for the LA Times Book Award, twice for the Whitbread/Costa and twice for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and has won the Nielsen Bookscan Golden Book Award, France's Prix Millepages, Italy's Premio Acerbi and Premio Napoli, an American Library Association Award, the American Ireland Fund Literary Award, the Hennessy Writer of the Year and Hall of Fame Awards, the Eason / An Post Novel of the Year Award, a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library, the Irish Pen Award for Outstanding Achievement and the Prix Madeline Zepter for European Novel of the Year. He is Frank McCourt Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick. www.josephoconnorauthor.com