Dominion

C. J. Sansom takes a break from his Shardlake series to offer Dominion, an absorbing, thoughtful, spy-politico thriller set in the fog-ridden London of 1952 … Part adventure, part espionage, all encompassed by terrific atmosphere and a well-argued “it might have been”. – Marcel Berlins * The Times *An intriguing thriller set in an alternative Britain under the Nazis cunningly reanimates the post-war years as they might have been … The tale he sets within his parallel universe is at once exciting, sophisticated and moving. There will be few better historical novels published this year. * The Sunday Times *This is a big novel with traces of a thriller, in which the good are good and the bad are very bad indeed … For readers who enjoy a grown-up adventure story Dominion is evocative, alarming and richly satisfying * Daily Express *Masterly … sketched with hallucinatory clarity … Sansom, whose Tudor mysteries showed his feeling for the plight of good people in a brutal, treacherous society, builds his nightmare Britain from the sooty bricks of truth … Dominion shows us what a truly broken Britain would look, and feel, like. – Boyd Tonkin * Independent *A thriller which is also, and perhaps primarily, a work of alternative or counter-factual history, set in 1952 … in the manner of Robert Harris’s Fatherland. There are fine things a-plenty here, and the plot unfolds compellingly and gallops along briskly. C. J. Sansom has brought off a nice double, writing a good thriller which invites you to ponder the different course history might have taken – Allan Massie * Scotsman *C. J. Sansom is fascinated by the abuse of power, so it’s not surprising that, hot on the heels of his splendid Shardlake series, comes a novel set in a post-war Britain dominated by Nazi ideology … Dominion is absorbing, mordant and written with a passionate persuasiveness … Bravo! * Independent on Sunday *One of the thrills of Dominion is to see a writer whose previous talent has been for the captivating dramatisation of real history creating an invented mid-20th century Britain that has the intricate detail and delineation of JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth … A tremendous novel that shakes historical preconceptions while also sending shivers down the spine. – Mark Lawson * The Guardian *The chase is exciting and the action thrilling, but the really absorbing part of this excellent book is the detailed creation of a society that could so easily have existed. * Literary Review *Fans of Robert Harris will love this. * Mail on Sunday *Dominion is terrific. And no, this isn’t one of those publisher-sponsored blurbs. I just fell in love with it. Nice and long, too. – Stephen King, author of It, The Shining and 11.22.63

C. J. Sansom was educated at Birmingham University, where he took a BA and then a Ph.D. in history. After working in a variety of jobs, he retrained as a solicitor and practised in Sussex, until becoming a full-time writer. He is the bestselling author of the acclaimed “Shardlake” series, and the Spanish Civil War thriller ‘Winter in Madrid’. C.J. Sansom died in April 2024.

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