The Partisan
The explosive debut thriller for fans of Robert Harris and Charles Cumming
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4.3 • 22 Ratings
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- £0.99
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- £0.99
Publisher Description
'Remarkedly assured debut ... the advent of a real talent...One to watch' Sunday Times
'Immersive, intriguing, and intelligent - incredibly impressive, up there with the best in the genre' Lee Child
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It is the summer of 1961 and the brutal Cold War between East and West is becoming ever more perilous.
Two young prodigies from either side of the Iron Curtain, Yulia and Michael, meet at a chess tournament in London. They don't know it, but they are about to compete in the deadliest game ever played.
Shadowing them is Greta, a ruthless resistance fighter who grew up the hard way in the forests of Lithuania, but who is now hunting down some of the most dangerous men in the world.
Men who are also on the radar of Vassily, perhaps the Soviet Union's greatest spymaster. A man of cunning and influence, Vassily was Yulia's minder during her visit to the West, but even he could not foresee the consequences of her meeting Michael.
When the world is accelerating towards an inevitable and catastrophic conflict, what can just four people do to prevent it?
Epic in scope, The Partisan is a thrill ride like no other, taking you from the hallowed halls of Cambridge to the grimy depths of the Moscow underworld, from 1960s London to the Eastern Front in the Second World War.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dr. Zhivago meets James Bond in British author Worrall's ambitious debut. In 1941, a trio of war-orphaned teenagers escape into the forests of Lithuania, waging a guerrilla campaign against the occupying German army. Twenty years later, Greta, the lone survivor, is now an independent, capable assassin ruthlessly dispatching Nazi fugitives, while still hunting for the Russian who killed her mother and for the English double agent who betrayed her resistance network. At a chess tournament in London, Michael Fitzgerald, a Cambridge University student, falls instantly in love with Yulia Forsheva, a Russian prodigy chess master and the daughter of important Politburo officials. Their star-crossed romance is aided by Yulia's chaperone, a Soviet spymaster disgusted by the brutality of his comrades. This romance catches the attention of both Michael's father, the Director of Naval Intelligence, and Greta, who separately coerce him to spy on Yulia's inner circle, particularly the sadistic chief administrator of the Soviet nuclear weapons program and the architect of a plan that might spark a new world war. Worrall expertly weaves complex backstories and crossed narratives while vividly depicting the paranoia of everyday Soviet life, the barbarism of war, and shrewd old-fashioned spycraft. Fans of intricate Cold War–era spy thrillers will be enthralled.
