November 6, 2017
The 1938 Munich peace negotiations form the backdrop for this intelligent novel. Thriller Award–winner Harris (Conclave) presents the diplomatic give-and-take through the perspectives of two friends who have fallen out of touch: Hugh Legat of His Majesty’s Diplomatic Service and his Oxford schoolmate, Paul von Hartmann, who serves as a translator for the German Foreign Ministry. For Hugh, the international crisis coincides with the deterioration of his marriage. Paul is recruited by a group of conspirators hoping that Hitler’s militarily unrealistic plans to attack Czechoslovakia will lead his generals to support an effort to topple him. Meanwhile, Neville Chamberlain holds vigorous discussions with his cabinet about what he could and should do to avert what he believes will be a civilization-shattering conflict that will cost many British lives over “a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.” Harris succeeds in not only transforming a familiar historical event into a novel of suspense but in making the derided Chamberlain sympathetic. 100,000-copy announced first printing. Agent: Michael Carlisle, Inkwell Management.
November 15, 2017
Old friends reunite in hopes of derailing Hitler's war machine.Harris (Conclave, 2016, etc.) returns to familiar territory in his 12th novel. Hugh Legat and Paul von Hartmann became friends as students at pre-World War II Oxford, where Hartmann, a German national, was a Rhodes scholar. Then each went into the service of his country--Legat is the British prime minister's most junior private secretary, and Hartmann is a member of the German diplomatic corps and one of a group of conspirators who would oust Hitler. The Fuhrer's 1938 announcement that he intends to annex the Sudetenland, a German-speaking area of Czechoslovakia, brings the two together again. A German invasion of Czechoslovakia would cause a response from France, and a Franco-German war would necessarily involve the U.K. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, determined to avoid such a war, calls for a diplomatic solution, and thus Legat and Hartmann become participants in the Conference of Munich. Chamberlain, pursuing a policy of appeasement, advocates the cession of the Sudetenland. Legat and Hartmann join together to try to avert the appeasement--Legat because he believes no accommodation will deflect Hitler, and Hartmann because he hopes that if Hitler attempts war the army will move against him. Legat and Hartmann move among real historical characters, and Harris skillfully interpolates them into vivid and accurate settings and situations. In particular the portrayal of Chamberlain, often reviled as the man who brought "peace in our time" while Hitler's forges roared, is humane and sympathetic--and the sly suggestion that he may have known full well what he was doing brightens an ending that is, after all, predetermined.Engaging, informative, and quietly suspenseful.
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November 15, 2017
September 1938. Adolf Hitler has announced that he will cross the Czechoslovakian border in the coming days and seize the Sudetenland. Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, is desperate to negotiate a peaceful surrender of the Sudeten territory and avoid an all-out war. Harris, the author of such first-rate historical thrillers as Fatherland (1992) and An Officer and a Spy (2014), tells this gripping story mostly through the eyes of two men: Hugh Legat, the prime minister's private secretary, and Paul von Hartmann, a German diplomat. Legat and Hartmann were friends once, several years ago; now their shared interest in peace may bring them together again, but stopping Hitler is a dangerous undertaking. Harris is a splendid storyteller whose ability to blend reality and fiction seamlessly is virtually unmatched. We know how Chamberlain's efforts to prevent war turned out, of course, but that doesn't stop us from being absolutely riveted to this tautly constructed, compellingly written story. Another surefire best-seller from a consistently fine author of historical fiction.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Expect to be seeing or hearing Harris pretty much everywhere in the new year, from national print and broadcast media to all manner of devices displaying bytes and pixels.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)
September 1, 2017
Returning to the territory of the alt-history classic Fatherland, Harris visits the Munich Conference, with two friends from 1920s Oxford in conflict. British diplomatic up-and-comer Guy Legat serves as private secretary to placating Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, while German Foreign Office staffer Rikard von Holz secretly belongs to the anti-Hitler Resistance.
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