The Great Mistake

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Description

Andrew Haswell Green was a self-made man. Born to a struggling farming family in 1820, he went on to reshape New York into a modern metropolis. Now, at the age of eighty-three, he lies murdered, a secret locked within him that may finally break free. As the detective assigned to the case traces his ghost across the city, other spectres appear. Among them is an ambitious politician, Samuel, whose relationship with Green was a source of joy and frustration, yearning and devotion.

As restlessly inventive and absorbing as its protagonist, The Great Mistake is the story of a city transformed, and a singular man: the father of New York.

Reviews

Wily, virtuosic, very beautiful - an intimate portrait of a public man that also serves as an X-ray of America. The Great Mistake is a great novel of New York, in which the shaping of public space becomes inextricable from the loneliness, longing, and ferocious ambition of a single, damaged man -- Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You
A great novel of 19th-century New York. A meditation on the meaning of success, and a magical escape from the 21st century that sent me back feeling wiser and more hopeful -- Sandra Newman, author of The Heavens
A wonderful, compelling, finely-tuned and deeply loveable novel, with a central character who is all of those things too. Jonathan Lee has taken the bare facts of a nearly forgotten life and turned them into a rich and unforgettable story -- Jon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13
Few writers working today have Jonathan Lee's range or eye for detail. Fewer still are capable of roaming minds and histories with such bittersweet, richly detailed ease. A wonder and a delight. -- Tea Obreht, author of The Tiger's Wife
A highly satisfying mix of mystery and character portrait, revealing the constrained heart beneath the public carapace. * Kirkus *
Elegiac and elegant, inviting and refined. The reader is immersed in [a] world that grows more dense with longing, regret and foreclosed possibilities... Lee's prose is thick with an emotional awareness that recalls the writing of Henry James * The Times *
Not a novel of grand deeds, but of grand imagination... quietly but intently ambitious * Guardian *
Seriously entertaining * Sunday Times *
[A] stylish, finely wrought mashup of mystery and history, which paints a dynamic portrait of both man and metropolis * Mail on Sunday *

Author Bio

Jonathan Lee is the author of the novels High Dive - a New York Times bestseller - Joy and Who is Mr Satoshi He has been shortlisted for the Edinburgh Festival First Book Award the Desmond Elliott Prize for literature, and longlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award. Born in the UK, he now lives in New York.