V2

Victory is close. Vengeance is closer. Rudi Graf has dreamt since childhood of sending a rocket to the moon. Instead, along with his friend Werner von Braun, he has helped create the world''s most sophisticated weapon - the V2 ballistic missile, capable of delivering a one-ton warhead that travels at three times the speed of sound. In a desperate gamble to avoid defeat, Hitler orders 10,000 to be built. Now, in the winter of 1944, Graf finds himself in a bleak seaside town in Occupied Holland. Haunted and disillusioned, he''s tasked with firing the V2s at London. Nobody understands the volatile, deadly machine better than he does. Kay Caton-Walsh is an officer in the WAAF. She has experienced at first-hand the horror of a V2 strike. As the rockets rain down, she joins a unit of WAAFs on a mission to newly-liberated Belgium. Armed with little more than a slide rule and a few equations, the hope is that Kay and her colleagues can locate and destroy the launch sites. But at this stage in the war it''s hard to know who, if anyone, you can trust. For every action on one side, there is an equal and opposite reaction on the other. As the death toll soars, the separate stories of Graf and Kay ricochet off one another, until in a final explosion of violence their destinies are forced together.

Auteur

Robert Harris is the author of fourteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy - Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator - Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep and V2. Several of his books have been filmed, including *The Ghos*t, which was directed by Roman Polanski. His work has been translated into forty languages and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in West Berkshire with his wife, Gill Hornby.

Texte du rabat

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'An immersive thriller set against a tense historical backdrop ... the joy is in the history as much as the story ... Once again Harris has placed the reader at the heart of a great historic event, using a small story to tell a great one.' FINANCIAL TIMES

A Sunday Times Best Historical Fiction Book of the Year
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The first rocket will take five minutes to hit London.
You have six minutes to stop the second.

Rudi Graf used to dream of sending a rocket to the moon. Instead, he has helped create the world's most sophisticated weapon: the V2 ballistic missile, capable of delivering a one-ton warhead at three times the speed of sound.

In a desperate gamble to avoid defeat in the winter of 1944, Hitler orders ten thousand to be built. Haunted and disillusioned, Graf - who understands the volatile, deadly machine better than anyone - is tasked with firing these lethal 'vengeance weapons' at London.

Kay Caton-Walsh is an officer in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, and a survivor of a V2 strike. As the rockets devastate London, she joins a unit of WAAFs on a mission to newly liberated Belgium. Armed with little more than a slide rule and a few equations, Kay and her colleagues will attempt to locate and destroy the launch sites.

But at this stage in the war it's hard to know who, if anyone, you can trust. As the death toll soars, Graf and Kay fight their grim, invisible war - until one final explosion of violence causes their destinies to collide.

'For a long time now, Harris has looked like the heir to John Le Carre, the popular yarn spinner with claims to permanence.' SUNDAY MORNING HERALD

'Harris finds the poetry in physics and the soul in engineering. He makes the V2s come to life as vividly as any of his human characters ... Harris has the great gift of readability; there is no living novelist whose books I am likelier to gobble up in one sitting.' JAKE KERRIDGE, TELEGRAPH

'I want to be the first to say it: Robert Harris scores a direct hit with V2. I was enthralled.' ANTHONY HOROWITZ

'Astonishingly precise ... As Graf and Kay plot and counterplot, questions rise and fall like rockets. V2 will keep you pinned on a compelling trajectory.' SUNDAY TIMES

'Harris captures the real nature of war. Gripping.' BEN MACINTYRE

'Delivers one hell of a punch' DAMIAN LEWIS's Books of the Year, EXPRESS

'Harris is delivering a warning about toxic futility and the ferocious propaganda needed to fuel it. His timing is, unlike the workings of the rockets he writes about, impeccable.' EVENING STANDARD

'Robert Harris is at the peak of his storytelling power with V2; it takes you all the way back to the pleasure of reading Enigma.' PATRICK NEALE

'The king of the page-turning thriller.' THE i

'Second World War buffs will enjoy Robert Harris's V2.' INDEPENDENT

'V2's portrait of a battered and weary London is not without a certain 2020 resonance.' TOM HOLLAND

[Bestseller in the UK, Sunday Times, September 2020]