Charlie Johnson in the Flames: A Novel - Softcover

Ignatieff, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080214182X ISBN 13: 9780802141828

Publisher: Grove Press, 2005

Synopsis

In his critically acclaimed New York Times Notable Book, Michael Ignatieff tells a story of striking contemporary relevance that has drawn comparisons to the novels of Graham Greene and Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers. Charlie Johnson is an American journalist working for a British news agency somewhere in the Balkans. He believes that over the course of a long career he has seen everything, but suddenly he finds himself more than simply a witness. A woman who has been sheltering Charlie and his crew is doused in gasoline and set on fire by a retreating Serbian colonel. As she stumbles, burning, down the road, Charlie dashes from hiding, throws her down rolling her over and over to extinguish the flames, burning his hands in the process. Believing the woman's life to have been saved, Charlie is traumatized by her death. Something snaps. He now realizes he has just one ambition left in life: to find the colonel and kill him.

About this title

Review:

"Charlie Johnson in the Flames is that good, belonging to the same order of thrillers by writers like Graham Greene, Len Deighton and Lionel Davidson" (Independent)

"A painfully believable novel about the human cost of war in the Balkans" (Lisa Jardine Sunday Times)

"Michael Ignatieff's cast of characters... are drawn to perfection" (Irish Times)

"Michael Ignatieff's third novel has a compressed, cinematic brilliance. You can read it in two hours, but the images it contains linger far longer than that...The texture of the novel marks this down as superior fiction" (Sunday Telegraph)

Book Description:

A powerful literary thriller-come-revenge tragedy set in a Balkan warzone.

'A precise, perfectly-aimed probe into some of the hardest questions of our age, or any other... extraordinary' - Spectator

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 080214182X
• ISBN 13: 9780802141828
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192