Yahoo Lifestyle Exclusive Excerpt From New WW II Thriller "The Ghosts of Rome"
Here is an exclusive excerpt from writer Joseph O’Connor’s new World War II thriller The Ghosts of Rome. It’s the second in the best-selling author’s Rome Escape Line trilogy. They’re suspense novels based on the true story of The Choir, a secretive group that smuggled thousands of Jews and Allied soldiers out of Nazi-occupied Rome.
The Ghosts of Rome looks set to be one of the most acclaimed books of 2025, thanks to high praise from early trade reviews. Publishers Weekly calls it “pulse-pounding,” Kirkus Review says it’s “top-notch storytelling” and Booklist raves it is “mesmerising, tragic, horrifying, utterly unputdownable.”
So what are we waiting for? Here’s a scene where an escaped Allied P.O.W. is given a tour of one of the hiding places for the people on the Escape Line.
Exclusive Excerpt From New WW II Thriller The Ghosts of Rome
The Ghosts of Rome by Joseph O’Connor ($28; Europa Editions) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Excerpt from The Ghosts of Rome by Joseph O’Connor. Courtesy of Europa Editions. Copyright 2025; all rights reserved.
Pilgrims new to Rome think the Teatro dell’Opera long abandoned. Those of a certain disposition feel it deserves a melancholy accompaniment, a tragic minor-key aria sung by a penniless consumptive on whose death the final curtain will fall.
The metal fence around the once-great edifice has in places been stripped away.
The tall first-floor window from where, on the opening night of Tosca, Puccini in his cloak saluted the roaring crowd in the street below, now bricked up like a muzzled face.
Rotting garbage in the classical portico used by night people as a latrine.
Splatters of Fascist and anti-Fascist graffiti scream at one another from the pillars:
LIBRO E MOSCHETTO, FASCISTA PERFETTO!
BANDIERA ROSSA TRIONFERÀ!
Barriers of burnt-out buses. A mound of rusted music stands. The corpse of a vandalised cello.
Rocketed during an air raid, the whole oblong of what was once the neoclassical front foyer is now a scummy water-filled crater where wild dogs nose and lap, staggering away afterwards, dizzy, to die.
Like all theatres, the Teatro has its ghosts.
A murdered conductor, Proietti, stares from the reflections of the ice buckets in the ruined crush bar. A mezzo-soprano who leapt to her death from the rooftop is said to walk the cobwebbed wings, singing to the phantom of a prompter. Others say the spirits have more sense than to come around here anymore. Let the Teatro crumble into its shadow, we have worse problems in Rome. Music won’t save us now.
As Derry and the Countess lead him through the foyer and into the auditorium, Weldrick notices strange details.
Footprints in the dust. Fresh cigarette butts. Empty bottles.
Prayerbooks and pornographic postcards strewn among the scorched velvet pews, where the wealthy not so long ago used to gather in expectation of being seen, to wave fingertips, or flirt behind fans.
From far above him, in the cheap seats known as “the gods”, the murmur of conversation.
Listen.
The words are in English.
You gotta.
I ain’t.
And your mother.
Okey dokey.
Then the hiss to be quiet. As the Contessa tells him, the order is to always be quiet in the Teatro.
“Coming here, you take a vow of silence, Weldrick. Understand?”
Weldrick nods.
“Don’t look so worried, chum,” Derry says, not quite succeeding in clapping him on the shoulder. “It’s like a lot of vows in Rome. Pretty flexible.”
In the parterre, the OC appears, a blunt Northumbrian, pistol in hand, gesturing up towards the chatter as though gestures could quell it. Drawing his finger across his throat, he scowls. Choked laughter, derisive hoots are the response from on high. The fiction of rank becomes frail in the Teatro. They know he is ridiculous. So does he.
"Books" hiding in the Teatro come to see they are fortunate, the Contessa tells Weldrick, sotto voce. It is dry, has a roof, has lavatories, some of which, on the upper floors, still function. Basic food is provided—macaroni, horse beans, a little meat—the van in which they brought him has delivered sufficient for two days. The rooftop affords an escape route should a Gestapo raid occur. Rope ladders will be shown to him as part of his induction. There are cellars, an old sewer tunnel that once led to the tepidarium of a Roman bathhouse, ways out around the back, where the docking bay and scene-painting workshops used to be. A round-the-clock watch system is in effect from the high belltower at the end of the street. Probably from other vantages she doesn’t know about.
One of the old dressing rooms has a bathtub. The water comes very intermittently and will never be hot. A queuing arrangement is run by the subcommittee on bathing. There are fifty-nine men here. Waiting time for a bath is currently ten days. In the meantime, the ladies’ cloakroom on the bomb-damaged fourth floor has a couple of wash-hand stands. You are requested to pay attention to your personal hygiene, as best you can. A lice infestation going around the Teatro would shut the place down.
To save water, Jo adds, residents are asked to ablute over three days, in a strict sequence that Derry will explain. She turns away, lights a cigarette, looks up at the shattered chandeliers, as though what is about to be said is too masculine to be intruded upon.
“Top half, lower half, feet,” Derry says. “One razor blade per fortnight.” The Teatro offers those rarities of wartime: space, a little privacy. You share an opera box designed for eight bourgeoisie with only one companion, your box mate. You’ll sleep there, dress there, take your rations there, avoiding gatherings. What is asked in return for the privacy is silence and discretion. Always respect for your box mate, who like yourself is an escapee. He’s been through a tough time. Take it easy on him. Do not invite others to your box. Do not visit theirs. Chess or piquet with the Books in the boxes immediately next to your own is permissible, if it is played in box doorways, not within the interior of boxes. Never play for money or food.
“Or favours,” the OC adds. “Of any kind. Understand, mate?”
“Got it,” says Weldrick.
“I don’t need to spell it out?”
“You don’t need to spell it out.”
A scuffle up in the gods. Something heavy is overturned.
“I’ll come up there and smash every one of your ugly faces,” the OC hisses. “You miserable sods. Shut it. Now.”
“Sure you will, Big Guy,” comes the retort, in a sandpaper Staten Island rasp, but the OC pretends not to hear it.
“Never, ever go to the dress circle staircase,” he tells Weldrick.
“Big Guy knows best,” comes the call.
“I’m warning you, shut it, Moody,” the OC snaps.
“You’re the noisy one, Big Guy. Quit the cackle. We’re bored shitless.”
The dress circle staircase is where a system of rigged ropes attached to a ceiling-high stack of ice buckets has been set up as alarm. If Jerry does come calling, the fire doors he’ll need to smash through at the end of that corridor will trip the guy rope and topple the pile. The racket will warn the escapees to get out through the attic dormers. If further escape proves impossible—say if Jerry’s taken the neighbouring rooftops—“We stand hard and give him hellfire to the last.” Whatever weapons are available will be readied and handed out. “We have three pistols, about forty rounds, seven grenades.” One of the grenades is an anti-tank device, the effect if used inside a building will be horrific. Your duty is to kill at least three German soldiers preferably officers if there’s a choice. After that, it’s every man for himself.
If captured, reveal nothing.
“Don’t get captured,” the Contessa says.
“If you’re down to your last bullet,” the OC interrupts, “make it count. Now go to your box. It’s number twenty-nine. And keep quiet. Understand? You’ll have it to yourself. Couple of nights at least.”
“I thought you said you were crowded,” Weldrick says.
“I did.”
“So how come I get a box to myself?"
“The two we had in twenty-nine insisted on going out for a stroll yesterday morning.”
“And?"
“Shot by the Jerries last night.”
A whirring sound. Laughter. They look up to the gods.
Approaching speedily, on a zipwire, a tattoo-torso man in a leopard-skin loincloth, from above him bleary cheers from the darkness.
The OC rolls his eyes as the descender alights on the stage, mock curtseying to the gods and now to baffled Weldrick.
“Jack Moody,” he says. “Fine to meet you.”
Excerpt from The Ghosts of Rome by Joseph O’Connor. Courtesy of Europa Editions. Copyright 2025; all rights reserved.
Joseph O’Connor’s Shadowplay was named Novel of the Year at the 2019 Irish Book Awards and was a finalist for the prestigious Costa Book Award. His novel Star of the Sea was published in thirty-eight languages and won France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s Premio Acerbi, the Irish Post Award for Fiction, the Nielsen Bookscan Golden Book Award, an American Library Association Award, the Hennessy/Sunday Tribune Hall of Fame Award, and the Prix Littéraire Zepter for European Novel of the Year.
O'Connor is the author of ten novels and is the Inaugural Frank McCourt Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick. My Father’s House, the critically acclaimed first book in his Rome Escape Line Trilogy was a Washington Post Best Book of the Year and was a finalist for the Walter Scott Prize.
The Ghosts of Rome by Joseph O’Connor ($28; Europa Editions) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
