The best historical fiction combines a gripping plot with meticulous research - leaving the reader inspired to learn more about the real-life protagonists. And the latest release from Robert Harris once more proves his mastery of the genre Soldier You could read this as a pure thriller, and it is one of Harris’s most compellingly placed 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

Act of Oblivion: A Novel by Robert Harris, Paperback | Barnes Act of Oblivion: A Novel by Robert Harris, Paperback | Barnes

Harris is amaster of historical fiction, a compelling authorwho brings to life the recent and ancient past." — Times Literary SupplementAn absolutely stunning historical novel and a ripping crime thriller at the same time. I've been recommending it far and wide and buying it for people for Christmas! Dead Good

Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris | Waterstones Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris | Waterstones

But now, ten years after Charles’ beheading, the royalists have returned to power. Under the provisions of the Act of Oblivion, the fifty-nine men who signed the king’s death warrant and participated in his execution have been found guilty in absentia of high treason. Some of the Roundheads, including Oliver Cromwell, are already dead. Others have been captured, hung, drawn, and quartered. A few are imprisoned for life. But two have escaped to America by boat.In London, Richard Nayler, secretary of the regicide committee of the Privy Council, is charged with bringing the traitors to justice and he will stop at nothing to find them. A substantial bounty hangs over their heads for their capture—dead or alive. . . . Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, Colonel William Goffe, cross the Atlantic. Having been found guilty of high treason for the murder of Charles the I, they are wanted and on the run. A reward hangs over their heads - for their capture, dead or alive. There is satisfaction in the well-made novel, and Robert Harris’s Act of Oblivion. . . [is one of the] best-made and thereforemost enjoyable new novels I read this year.”— The Scotsman Robert Harris is] writing fiction, but he treats the few available facts and the more plausible theories with respect, and skillfully extrapolates from them. . . . Harris underpins [ Act of Oblivion] with substantial research and writes inunobtrusively effective prose. . . . This is Harrisat his best, which is very good indeed." — The Guardian