From the acclaimed author of Star of the Sea comes a riveting, emotionally acute novel of resistance and rescue during the Second World War as an Irish priest prepares a daring mission in Vatican City from under the noses of the Nazis.
Waterstones Irish Book of the Month for February 2024
Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2024
September 1943: German forces occupy Rome. SS officer Paul Hauptmann rules with terror. The war's outcome is far from certain.
An Irish priest, Hugh O'Flaherty, dedicates himself to helping those escaping from the Nazis. His home is Vatican City, the world's smallest state, a neutral, independent country within Rome where the occupiers hold no sway. Here Hugh brings together an unlikely band of friends to hide the vulnerable under the noses of the enemy.
But Hauptmann's net begins closing in on the Escape Line and the need for a terrifyingly audacious mission grows critical. By Christmastime, it's too late to turn back.
Based on an extraordinary true story, My Father's House is a powerful literary thriller from a master of historical fiction. Joseph O'Connor has created an unforgettable novel of love, faith and sacrifice, and what it means to be truly human in the most extreme circumstances.
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9781529919646
Number of pages: 416
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 27 mm
Weight: 296 g
Language: English
A spectacular, thrilling novel...suspense crackles...celebrates triumphant against-the-odds camaraderie. - Sunday Times
O'Connor is on stellar form with this ensemble thriller ...while the story's inbuilt tension urges you on, it's the sheer vigour of O'Connor's beautifully turned phrases that really makes the book sing...an expert storyteller - Daily Mail
A literary thriller of the highest order. The incarnation of O'Flaherty, the Irish Oskar Schindler, is sublime. What often elevates a writer is compassion, and O'Connor has it in spades... Beautifully crafted, his razor-sharp dialogue is to be savoured, and he employs dark humour to great effect. The plot twists keep on coming - Observer
Breathtakingly good writing - O'Connor puts you right there, centre stage in the story and never lets you go
The novel's evocative scene-setting, its propulsive narration and its powerful depiction of bravery and unity in extremis, all make for an engrossing read. - Telegraph
Thrilling... Based on true events, this tense, gripping narrative is rendered in beautifully evocative prose - Mail on Sunday
Impressive and pleasurable...the diverse ventriloquism of O'Connor's novel evokes a city in peril with wonderful vitality - Financial Times
A tale worth re-telling, adorned as it is by the brilliants of O'Connor's impressionistic writing - The Times
A powerful portrait of extraordinary courage - Irish Independent
Precisely choreographed... We eagerly follow the characters through uncertainty and disappointment as well as high-stakes jeopardy. O'Connor is playing with the possibilities of multiple narrators, and thinking also about plurality, reliability and the historical record - Guardian, Book of the Day
The Song of Achilles
The Book Thief
The Silence of the Girls
The Pillars of the Earth
Dissolution
Girl With a Pearl Earring
A Thousand Ships
The Essex Serpent
The Miniaturist
Company of Liars
How We Disappeared
This is the Joseph O'Connor I know and love. I was mighty disappointed by Shadowplay but with My Father's House he is back to his storytelling best.
This novel tells a fictitious version of the real life of...
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One of my favourite films is The Scarlet and The Black - with Gregory Peck in it. I have watched this film so many times and of all the WW2 stories this one breaks my heart each time.
So, I just absolutely had to read...
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This book is inspired by the true story of Monsignor O'Falherty,an Irish priest working in the Vatican who helped smuggle Jews and POW'S out of Italy during WW2.What a brave story,hiding so many people from... More
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