‘The cardboard box rests on his knees . . . he slowly picks undone the knot of the binding string and after just a heartbeat’s hesitation lifts away the lid. The contents are neatly bundled, wrapped in red velvet cloth and meticulously tied in broad white ribbon, which he unfurls and spreads with care out across the old teak coffee table. The cache comprises four badly yellowed newspaper clippings, a pair of faded hand-sized photographs, and a sheaf of letters twenty-three of them, once counted, not as straightforward a task as it might initially seem since several of them run to two or even three front- and back-filled pages . . .’
The Paper Man is an unforgettable interwar love story by Costa Prize-shortlisted and bestselling Irish author of Life Sentences Billy O’Callaghan.
Jack Shine discovers a shoebox of his mother’s love letters and newspaper clippings that she kept about a famous footballer. Rebekah came to Ireland alone as a young Jewish refugee from Austria. She died soon after, and Jack never learned his father’s identity. As Jack uncovers his mother’s life, he is transported from 1980s Cork to 1930s Vienna, a bustling city on the brink of war.
Based on true events, Billy O’Callaghan’s The Paper Man is the story of twentieth-century Europe and love against the odds.
Leave your review