The Ghosts Of Rome

A superb testament to humankind’s bravery and resilience…moving and immersive * Guardian, Books of the Year *Tremendous and terrifying – Fintan O’Toole * Irish Times Books of the Year *The tension doesn’t slack an inch… It is haunting, sensuous and immaculately constructed — without sacrificing any thrills * Sunday Times, Summer Reads of 2025 *The Ghosts of Rome is both a tribute to the imagination and courage of his remarkable team [of The Escape Line] and a riveting thriller * Times Literary Supplement *Blazes with imaginative flair and narrative energy… packed with sensuously evoked reminders of Rome’s rich past…haunted and haunting * Sunday Times *There is no finer writer of historical fiction than Joseph O’Connor… Beautifully written, warm and witty, this story of a terrorised city is a must-read. Thrilling, terrifying and entertaining in equal measure. – Liz Nugent, Number One Bestselling author of STRANGE SALLY DIAMOND[A] vivid and moving story, with O’Connor seamlessly combining real characters with imagined ones * Guardian *As thrilling, beautiful and sensational a novel as you’ll read this or any year – Donal Ryan * Sunday Times *Digs ever deeper into the lives of the everyday heroes of a war-ravaged city, unearthing stories of remarkable courage and ingenuity that glitter from the pages of this tense, polyphonic narrative – Sarah GilmartinA stellar piece of storytelling. O’Connor brilliantly captures the sense of the city and its inhabitants in peril * Daily Mail *

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. He 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 Madeleine Zepter for European Novel of the Year.

He is Frank McCourt Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.

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