The Second Son

Jonathan Rabb is the author of the critically acclaimed historical novels Rosa and Shadow and Light, the first two books in a trilogy set in Europe between the wars. The Second Son is the eagerly awaited final installment set between the two world wars. On the eve of Hitler’s Olympics, Chief Inspector Nikolai Hoffner, a half Jew, has been forced out of the Kriminalpolizei. Luckily, Hoffner’s focus is elsewhere. His son Georg is missing in Spain, swept up in the sudden outbreak of the civil war. He has already lost Sascha, his elder son, who is fully entrenched in the Nazi regime. But Georg is not what he appears to be, and when Hoffner discovers this, he is determined to save the one son he can. Now, nearly ten years after the events of Shadow and Light, Hoffner finds himself tossed into the chaos that is Spain—where he quickly meets anarchists, Soviet and British secret agents, and a female doctor called Mila Pera—as he follows a trail of clues left by Georg. In the spirit of Joseph Kanon and Alan Furst—whose ForeignCorrespondent also took place in the mountains of Spain—Rabb delivers another atmospheric work, rich with his storytelling talent and historical expertise. The Second Son, will be published early in 2011.

Rabb won the international Dashiell Hammett prize at the Spanish Semana Negra Festival in 2006 for Rosa. Prior to the trilogy, Rabb wrote The Overseer and The Book of Q, and contributed essays and reviews to Opera News and the collection I Wish I’d Been There. He graduated from Yale, and completed his graduate work at Columbia in political theory. His novels have been translated into fifteen languages. He teaches creative writing at both NYU and SCAD. After many years living in New York City, he and his wife and two children recently moved to Savannah, and they couldn’t be happier.

http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/rosa/author.html

The Savannah Book Festival is a non-profit organization that hosts an annual, weekend-long festival of the written and spoken word, February 18-20, 2011. It remains free and open to the public at Telfair Square, in the Historic District of Savannah, Ga.

Sponsors

This author’s appearance at the 2011 festival has been graciously sponsored by:

• Mr. and Mrs. Dayle and Aaron Levy