Harris, Robert

Robert Harris is the author of 14 novels, including bestsellers worldwide such as Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, and a trilogy of books about the Roman statesman Cicero – Imperium, Conspirata, and Dictator. Before becoming a full-time novelist, he worked as a BBC reporter, political editor of The Observer, and columnist at The Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph. Act of Oblivion: A Novel (Harper) is his first historical novel set predominantly in America. It is 1660 in England and General Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, Colonel William Goffe, board a ship bound for the New World. They are on the run, wanted for the murder of King Charles I. Ten years after Charles’ beheading, the royalists have returned to power and the 59 men who signed the king’s death warrant and participated in his execution have been found guilty in absentia of high treason. Some are already dead; others have been captured, hung, drawn, and quartered. A few are imprisoned for life. But the two who escaped to America are now being hunted by Richard Nayler, the secretary of the regicide committee who is charged with bringing these traitors to justice – and he will stop at nothing to find and capture them, dead or alive.