**AS SEEN ON BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS**AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4**THE NUMBER ONE IRISH BESTSELLER**
When the Nazis take Rome, thousands go into hiding. One priest will risk everything to save them.
September 1943: German forces occupy Rome. SS officer Paul Hauptmann rules with terror.
An Irish priest, Hugh O'Flaherty, dedicates himself to helping those escaping from the Nazis. His home is Vatican City, a neutral, independent country within Rome where the occupiers hold no sway. He gathers a team to set up an Escape Line.
But Hauptmann's net begins closing in and the need for a terrifyingly audacious mission grows critical. By Christmas, it's too late to turn back.
Based on a true story, My Father's House is a powerful thriller from a master of historical fiction. It is an unforgettable novel of love, sacrifice and what it means to be human in the most extreme circumstances.
'A spectacular, thrilling novel...suspense crackles...celebrates triumphant against-the-odds camaraderie' Sunday Times
'A masterwork... so urgent, so incredibly alive... A searing and beautiful example of storytelling's infinite importance' Donal Ryan
'Impressive and pleasurable...the diverse ventriloquism of O'Connor's novel evokes a city in peril with wonderful vitality' Financial Times
LONGLISTED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2024
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024
*The second book in the Rome Escape Line Trilogy, THE GHOSTS OF ROME, is available to pre-order now.*

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 and 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 Madeline Zepter for European Novel of the Year. He is Frank McCourt Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.
www.josephoconnorauthor.com