Ronan Bennett

As the murder of a respected newspaper editor shocks 1914 St. Petersburg, psychoanalyst Dr. Otto Spethmann, his young daughter, and his patients find themselves pawns in a nightmarish game of political intrigue.

a novel

Zugzwang

Roman

In a tale set against a backdrop of civil war-torn early seventeenth-century England, principled governor John Brigge, increasingly discomfited by zealous Puritanism, hides his affection for his pregnant wife's young ward and refuses to convict a vagrant woman in spite of prejudiced town leaders. 30,000 first printing.

A Novel

Havoc, in Its Third Year

England in the 1630s: turbulent and fearful times. John Brigge, a farmer and coroner respected in his North Country community, stays discreetly silent about his Catholic faith. When called to adjudicate on the murder of a new-born child, Brigge finds himself drawn into matters he would rather avoid. Irishwoman Katherine Shay is accused of killing her baby, and the town's powerful Puritan faction demands her immediate death. But Brigge suspects their haste has little to do with a quest for justice.

Paul Hill

Before and After Guildford

Stolen Years

Ronan Bennett's new masterpiece of literary suspense unfolds in a city on the verge of revolution. On a blustery April day, a respected St. Petersburg newspaper editor is murdered in front of a shocked crowd. Five days later, Dr. Otto Spethmann, the celebrated psychoanalyst, receives a visit from the police. There has been another murder in the city-and somehow he is implicated. The doctor is mystified and deeply worried, as much for his young, spirited daughter as for himself. Meanwhile, he finds himself preoccupied by two new patients: Anna Petrovna, a society beauty plagued with nightmares with whom he is inappropriately falling in love, and the troubled genius Rozental, a brilliant but fragile chess master on the verge of a complete breakdown. As Dr. Spethmann is drawn deeper into the murderous intrigue, he finds that he, his patients, and his daughter may all be pawns in a game larger in scope than anything he could have imagined. Punctuated with board-by-board illustrations of a chess match that plays out through the book, Zugzwang is a masterfully written novel packed with cliffhangers, romance, unforgettable characters, and a plot that keeps readers guessing to the very end.

The Catastrophist is a brilliant, highly acclaimed novel of love, passion, violence, and desire, set in the Belgian Congo in 1959. While expatriates loll about their pools in a colonial paradise soon to erupt into chaos, huge crowds are drawn to the charismatic Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba -- and his even more dangerous rivals. One man sees the cracks appearing around him and struggles to hold on to his lover, his sanity, and ultimately, his life. Gillespie, the outsider, a journalist, is in Léopoldville for the beautiful Italian, Inés. He is desperate for her love, while she is obsessed with the unfolding drama, caught up in history, ideology, hero worship. In a world slipping out of control, gripped by disgust, fear, and incomprehension, Gillespie feels that events threaten to overwhelm him -- as does his friendship with the amiable but sinister American, Stipe; his relationship with his canny native driver, Auguste; and, above all, his love for Inès. It is Inès who defines Gillespie as a catastrofista, an Italian word for somebody for whom "no problem is small. Nothing can be fixed; it is always the end," for Gillespie is deeply pessimistic and skeptical about their relationship as well as politics, while Inès believes in engagement and commitment, whatever the risks -- which, as it turns out, are greater than either of them can foresee. As colonial corruption and injustice give way to turmoil, brutality, and murder, Gillespie is finally forced to confront what is happening before his eyes. In subtle, haunting prose, Ronan Bennett captures the complex connection between the personal and the political, between cruelty and lust, between eroticism and love, between courage and fear, between detachment and involvement. The Catastrophist is a bold, courageous novel, at once a searing love story and a terrifying political thriller, in the tradition of such books as Graham Greene's The Comedians or such postcolonial classics as The Year of Living Dangerously -- an erotic Heart of Darkness for the twentieth century.

Ronan Bennett

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