Act of Oblivion

By: Robert Harris

Narrated by: Tim McInnerny

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

From the bestselling author of Fatherland, The Ghostwriter, Munich, and Conclave comes this spellbinding historical novel that brilliantly imagines one of the greatest manhunts in history: the search for two Englishmen, charged in the killing of King Charles I, by the implacable foe on their trail—an epic journey into the wilds of seventeenth-century New England, and a chase like no other.

"From what is it they run?"
He took a while to reply. By the time he spoke the men had gone inside. He said quietly, “They killed the King.”

1660. General Edward Whalley and his son-in-law Colonel William Goffe board a ship in London bound for the New World and an uncertain future in exile. They are wanted for the 1649 murder of King Charles I – a brazen execution that marked the culmination of the English Civil War, in which parliamentarians successfully battled royalists for control. But ten years after Charles’ beheading, the royalists returned to power. Under the provisions of the Act of Oblivion, the fifty-nine men who signed the king’s death warrant have been found guilty in absentia of high treason. Some parliamentarians, including Oliver Cromwell, are dead; others have been captured, hung, drawn, and quartered. A few are imprisoned for life. But Whalley and Goffe escaped to New England. In London, Richard Nayler, secretary of the regicide committee of the Privy Council, is charged with bringing the traitors back home to justice and will stop at nothing to find them. A substantial bounty hangs over their heads for their capture—dead or alive. Encompassing a period of tremendous upheaval in English history the novel brings alive pivotal moments including the Black Death and the Great Fire of London as Nayler closes in on the exiles. Act of Oblivion is an epic story of religion, vengeance, and of power—and the costs to those who wield it.

©2022 Robert Harris (P)2022 Random House Canada

Critic reviews

"A remarkably versatile novelist whose settings range from Ancient Rome to 800 years in the future. A former political journalist, he often explores the darker aspects of politics and its corrupting effects on individuals.... Harris underpins the book with substantial research and writes in unobtrusively effective prose.... This is Harris at his best, which is very good indeed.” —The Guardian

"Read as thriller or gripping history, Robert Harris is at his best in this Civil War page-turner…. Robert Harris is one of the finest thriller writers alive, but what he does best, really, is history…. For a time...things become existential. One episode in the darkness of a cave, where the pursuit comes agonisingly close, could almost be found in a novel by Joseph Conrad. At the same time, and this is Harris’s great strength, the cave scene is quiveringly tense. Hollywood-ready…. You could read this as a pure thriller, and it is one of Harris’s most compellingly paced to date. You could read it as a piece of intelligent historical immersion. I think it is more; I think it is his best since Fatherland." —Sunday Times (UK)

"A gripping manhunt for the men who killed Charles I... Act of Oblivion is a belter of a thriller. It will be compulsive reading for those who loved An Officer and a Spy, Harris’s book about the Dreyfus affair. Like that novel, the research is immaculate. A chewy, morally murky slice of history is made into a tale that twists and surprises. The characters are strong and we care about their predicament. The story stretches over continents and years, but the suspense feels as taut as if the three main characters were locked in a room with a gun." —The Times (UK)