The Ghosts of Rome

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE

★ "Mesmerising, tragic, horrifying, utterly unputdownable... An outstanding read for fans of WWII fiction and of writers like Anthony Doerr."--Emily Melton, Booklist (Starred Review)

In the final months of World War II, a clandestine group known as The Choir successfully smuggles thousands of escapees out of Nazi-occupied Rome via a secret route known as the Escape Line. When an unidentified airman falls wounded from the sky, The Choir is plunged into danger and the survival of the Escape Line itself is threatened.

The Escape Line's collapse would leave thousands stranded. Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, its architect and the acknowledged leader of The Choir, broods inside the Vatican, paralyzed by the perils of keeping his Roman underground railroad functioning. Meanwhile, SS Commander Paul Hauptmann has been tasked with destroying the entire operation, and the price of failure is high--his wife and children are under Gestapo lock-and-key in Berlin. Into this deliriously thrilling melee steps Contessa Giovanna Landini, a reckless, audacious, and magnetic member of the Italian Resistance who has the nerve to challenge Hauptmann's authority.

Beautifully written and expertly crafted, The Ghosts of Rome is a historical suspense novel bursting with action, atmosphere, and unforgettable characters by one of contemporary fiction's most acclaimed and beloved writers.

"The power of The Ghosts of Rome comes from the dazzling variety of voices employed, the sense of a world constructed in multiple dimensions... What emerges is not just a wartime thriller, though it is that, but a meditation on how we remember, how we resist and how, even in the darkest times, humanity endures."--Alex Preston, The New York Times Book Review

Author: Joseph O'Connor
Publisher: Europa Editions
Published: 02/04/2025
Pages: 400
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.20w x 1.50d
ISBN: 9798889660620


Review Citation(s):
Booklist 10/15/2024 pg. 25
Publishers Weekly 12/02/2024
Kirkus Reviews 12/15/2024

About the Author
O'Connor, Joseph: - Joseph O'Connor's Shadowplay was named Novel of the Year at the 2019 Irish Book Awards and was a finalist for the prestigious Costa Book Award. His novel Star of the Sea was published in thirty-eight languages and won France's Prix Millepages, Italy's Premio Acerbi, the Irish Post Award for Fiction, the Nielsen Bookscan Golden Book Award, an American Library Association Award, the Hennessy/Sunday Tribune Hall of Fame Award, and the Prix Littéraire Zepter for European Novel of the Year. He is the author of ten novels and is the Inaugural Frank McCourt Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick. My Father's House, the critically acclaimed first book in his Rome Escape Line Trilogy was a Washington Post Best Book of the Year and was a finalist for the Walter Scott Prize.