The first two novels in Joseph O’Connor’s acclaimed Escape Line trilogy, MY FATHER’S HOUSE and THE GHOSTS OF ROME, are both in the Top Five in the Irish bestseller charts following THE GHOSTS OF ROME being awarded the prestigious overall An Post Irish Book of the Year Award 2025 last week.
THE GHOSTS OF ROME is No.5 in the Original Fiction and No.4 in the paperback charts, while MY FATHER’S HOUSE is No.4 in the paperback charts.
MY FATHER’S HOUSE, the first novel in the trilogy, was first published to great acclaim in the UK and Ireland by Harvill Secker in January 2023 and in the US by Europa Editions in April 2023. It was an Irish Number One bestseller and has now sold more than 150,000 copies in English. It was shortlisted for the 2024 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the Eason An Post Irish Novel of the year 2023, and also longlisted for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award. Film rights are optioned and translation rights are also sold in Albania, Brazil, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Poland, Spain and Sweden.
In MY FATHER’S HOUSE, 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 SS officer Paul 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.
THE GHOSTS OF ROME, the second novel in the trilogy, was first published in the UK by Harvill Secker in January 2025 and in the US by Europa Editions in February 2025. Like the first book in the trilogy before it, THE GHOSTS OF ROME went straight to Number One in the Irish bestseller chart after only 3 days on sale, remaining in the overall Irish Top Ten for five weeks, and in the Irish Paperback Top 10 for sixteen weeks. It hit the Top 20 in the UK charts.
In THE GHOSTS OF ROME, Contessa Giovanna Landini is a member of the band of Escape Line activists known as ‘The Choir’ in the beleaguered city of Rome. Their mission is to smuggle refugees to safety and help Allied soldiers, all under the nose of Gestapo boss Paul Hauptmann.
During a ferocious air raid a mysterious parachutist lands in Rome and disappears into the backstreets. Is he an ally or an imposter? His fate will come to put the whole Escape Line at risk.
Meanwhile, Hauptmann’s attention has landed on the Contessa. As his fascination grows, she is pulled into a dangerous game with him – one where the consequences could be lethal.
Joseph is currently working on the next novel in the trilogy, to be published in the UK and the US in early 2027.
About Joseph O’Connor
Joseph O’Connor was born in Dublin, where he still lives. THE GHOSTS OF ROME is his eleventh novel: he is also the author of film scripts, radio and stage plays, two collections of short stories, and several bestselling works of non-fiction.
2022 was the 20th anniversary of Joseph O’Connor’s novel STAR OF THE SEA which was an international bestseller, selling more than a million copies in the UK alone and being published in 38 languages. It won France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s Premio Acerbi, the Irish Post Award for Fiction, the Nielsen Bookscan Golden Book Award, an American Library Association Award, the Hennessy/Sunday Tribune Hall of Fame Award, and the Prix Litteraire Zepter for European Novel of the Year.
His novel GHOST LIGHT was chosen as Dublin’s One City Book novel for 2011. Published in 2019, SHADOWPLAY, has won him extraordinary praise, was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize, The Dalkey Novel Prize, the Costa Novel Prize, among others, and won him Novel of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards. The French edition was shortlisted for the Jean Monnet Prize and the Vintage paperback was a Richard and Judy Winter 2020 pick.
He holds an honorary Doctorate in Literature from University College Dublin and received the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature in 2012. He is the Inaugural Frank McCourt Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.
Praise for MY FATHER’S HOUSE and THE GHOSTS OF ROME
‘Joseph O’Connor’s historical novel MY FATHER’S HOUSE manages to be at once a ripping yarn and a profound exploration of moral choices in the worst of times… With lyrical evocation of time and place, scabrous humour and heart-stopping tension, it combines the pleasures of the ideal holiday read with those of a literary masterpiece.’ – Fintan O’Toole, The Irish Times, ‘The Best Books of 2023 so far’
‘Joseph O’Connor’s SHADOWPLAY won novel of the year at the 2019 Irish book awards and was shortlisted for the Costa Novel award. He also writes stage and screenplays, short stories, nonfiction and radio diaries. This formidable talent for writing across genres is reflected in his masterly 10th novel, which should reap similar plaudits… This is a literary thriller of the highest order. The incarnation of O’Flaherty, the Irish Oskar Schindler, is sublime. What often elevates a writer is compassion, and O’Connor has it in spades – paying tribute to the courage of those who resist tyranny. Beautifully crafted, his razor-sharp dialogue is to be savoured, and he employs dark humour to great effect. The plot twists keep on coming until the novel’s coda, where a final joyful conceit is revealed.’ – Lucy Popescu, The Observer
‘MY FATHER’S HOUSE is a masterwork. No writer in the world can tell a story the way Joseph O’Connor does. He can, without seeming effort, be all things to all readers, taking us by the hand and guiding us into the very heart of a story, his narrative techniques deployed with such unearthly skill that we're hardly aware that this was written at all, it feels so real, so urgent, so incredibly alive. This novel is a searing and beautiful example of storytelling’s infinite importance, to our humanness, to our chances of learning from our most terrible and our most transcendent moments, and all our moments in between, to hold all life sacred, to see each other as brothers and sisters, to love and protect each other. No wonder he is so cherished and loved by his countless devotees across the earth. He is a national and international treasure, the most generous and noble of writers, a true master of the art.’ – Donal Ryan
‘THE GHOSTS OF ROME, Joseph O’Connor’s second novel in his projected trilogy about Rome under Nazi occupation, blazes with the imaginative flair and narrative energy that won its predecessor, MY FATHER’S HOUSE, high acclaim… There’s no slackening of tension, though, in the gripping account of wartime heroism, risk and resourcefulness this book continues. Jeopardy quivers through it… . The ugly stratum of Nazi oppression O’Connor’s novel graphically resurrects is packed with sensuously evoked reminders of Rome's rich past in this haunted and haunting novel.’ – Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times
‘The Choir’s attempts to rescue a grievously wounded Polish airman right under the nose of Gestapo commander Paul Hauptmann, who has been warned of the Fuhrer’s “intense displeasure” at his failure to eradicate the Escape Line, have a nail-bitingly tense “real time” feel to them. BBC interviews from the 1960s with former Choir members and fragments of an unpublished memoir give historical perspective and added pathos to this vivid and moving story, with O’Connor seamlessly combining real characters with imagined ones.’ – Laura Wilson, The Guardian, ‘The best recent crime and thrillers’
‘O’Connor has often been likened to the great Irish modernists for the lyricism of his voice-driven novels. But THE GHOSTS OF ROME also situates him within a broader European tradition of memory and moral reckoning, one that returns again and again to World War II. O’Connor embraces this legacy while transcending its cliches. His Rome is not merely a setting but a crucible, a city where the sacred and the profane collide, where resilience is forged in the shadow of ruins. By crafting a chorus of voices, he ensures that no single narrative dominates, reflecting the messy, multifaceted truths of history – the way it is lived and how it is constructed in retrospect. What emerges is not just a wartime thriller, though it is that, but a meditation on how we remember, how we resist and how, even in the darkest times, humanity endures.’ – Alex Preston, The New York Times
Visit Joseph O’Connor’s website