Rent Ghost, The

Synopsis

The stunning new novel from the No. 1 bestselling author of Fatherland; Enigma; Archangel; Pompeii and Imperium.

'The moment I heard how McAra died I should have walked away. I can see that now. I should have said, 'Rick, I'm sorry, this isn't for me, I don't like the sound of it,' finished my drink and left. But he was such a good storyteller, Rick ' I often thought he should have been the writer and I the agent ' that once he'd started talking there was never any question I wouldn't listen, and by the time he had finished, I was done for.'

After five books set firmly in the past, Robert Harris returns with a contemporary novel that brings the reader face to face with some of the biggest issues of our time ' the result is a gripping and genuinely thrilling read.
The Washington Post - Patrick Anderson

For all its fun, The Ghost is finally about Guantanamo, rendition, waterboarding, official lies, a Halliburton-like conglomerate called Hallington and a CIA that's not always as inept as we think. Harris is asking at least three serious questions. First, in a conflict in which billions of dollars in cash are floating around the war zone, and more billions can be had from various kinds of corruption, should we be surprised if people who find out too much are murdered? Another question is why a popular British prime minister would commit political suicide by embracing an American war his people hate. The prime minister's own answer is that he believed with all his heart in the necessity of the war. That, however, isn't the answer Harris offers. IIt's not even close. Finally, he's asking if decent people have a chance against the modern embodiments of Big Brother. By the end of the novel, our nameless narrator recalls George Orwell's Winston at the close of 1984. Neither ending can be called ueat. Harris has managed to write a superior entertainment that is also an angry portrait of today's political reality.

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