Ghost (novel)

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Ghost (English original title: The Ghost ) is a novel by the British writer Robert Harris .

The theme of this thriller is the work of a ghostwriter whose life is in danger due to curiosity. The book was published in 2007 under the English original title The Ghost by Hutchinson / Random House , the German translation in the same year by Heyne Verlag . Wolfgang Müller translated.

action

The first-person narrator is a London ghostwriter who, completely surprisingly, receives the offer to write the memoirs of former Prime Minister Adam Lang (who can clearly be recognized as Tony Blair ). He ruled Great Britain for longer than any other Prime Minister before. Lang is said to receive $ 10 million from an American publisher for his memoirs. However, under two conditions: The book should be published within two years and Lang should relentlessly report on the time of terror. For this Lang had hired his former advisor Michael McAra as a ghostwriter. In order to move the project forward, Lang and his wife, private secretary and ghostwriter had retired to his publisher 's vacation home on Martha's Vineyard . But then McAra was found drowned.

The new ghostwriter - actually an expert for show stars and athletes - is supposed to finish the boring manuscript McAras in a few weeks and in the highest secrecy. As he travels to Lang's whereabouts on Martha's Vineyard, reports are spread in the media that Lang is about to be tried in the War Crimes Court in The Hague . The situation becomes even more tense for the ghostwriter, at the same time the publisher is demanding that the book be finished even faster in order to benefit from the anticipated media hype. When the ghostwriter encounters inconsistencies during the talks with Lang and happens to find documents that contradict Lang's representations, he sets out to do his own research. In doing so, he discovers what his predecessor had apparently found out at the expense of his life: that Lang is deeply entangled with the CIA and therefore submitted to Washington in everything. Publication of this information would have global political consequences. The ghostwriter must therefore fear for his life.

filming

The novel was filmed in 2010 by Roman Polański under the title The Ghostwriter .

expenditure

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Review in The Guardian