Thomas Harding

What’s in a name? Well, if it’s Einstein, quite a lot. Thomas Harding has carved out a significant reputation as a prize-winning writer, and The Einstein Vendetta makes for deeply shocking reading. This is a gripping, finely researched, superbly written and deeply important book

I absolutely devoured The Einstein Vendetta. It is so moving and the way in which Harding navigates the unresolved nature of the story is quite remarkable. Totally compelling

An absolute triumph. Beautifully judged and infused with humanity and empathy

Nazi brutality, and the resulting family pain and grief, is vividly recorded. The Einstein Vendetta shines a light on these forgotten lives and crimes and on the limits of post-war attempts to secure justice. Harding evokes time and place beautifully, while paying forensic attention to detail. The result is a slow burn of cliff-hangers to keep the pages turning

The Einstein Vendetta will tug at your heartstrings and prompt righteous outrage. Harding captures beautifully the general atmosphere of wartime Tuscany, the fear the family must have felt in their last hours and the inhuman toll the executions took. Harding is excellent on the investigations of the case – the details of this ‘slow, hard work. Real shoe-leather work’ could in other hands be dry and dusty, but Harding makes them riveting: archival files poured over in search of vital clues, witnesses undone by failing memory, and always the hope that some small cosmic order will be restored by finding the man who ordered the shootings

Thomas Harding has carved out a niche unravelling unexplained events. The Einstein Vendetta shows that, although more than eighty years have passed since the Wehrmacht and the SS retreated from Tuscany, there is still substantial appetite to nail down the crimes they committed

With the narrative drive of a great novelist and the meticulous research of a great historian, Harding has crafted a moving, instructive and important book

Harding is a thoughtful and honest writer . . . an exemplary piece of history writing

Thomas Harding, our most human historian, has, once again, brought it alive . . . in all its tragedy, glory, complexity

Thomas Harding is a researcher of the first rank. Nobody quite stirs the soup of historical detail like Harding

Hitler, Mussolini, and a true story of murder

Italy, August 1944. A unit of German soldiers arrives at a villa near Florence. Villa Il Focardo is home to Robert Einstein, cousin to the most famous scientist in the world, Albert Einstein – a prominent enemy of the Nazi regime. Twelve hours after arriving, the soldiers have vanished – and a family is dead. 
 
This crime – and what happened next – still haunts those who survived. In The Einstein Vendetta, Thomas Harding recounts the story of an until-now untold true crime, one that unspools to reveal Italy’s brutal wartime history – its fall to fascism, antisemitism and bitter partisanship – and a family’s search for justice.

Thomas Harding

Praise for The Einstein Vendetta

Praise for The Einstein Vendetta

What’s in a name? Well, if it’s Einstein, quite a lot. Thomas Harding has carved out a significant reputation as a prize-winning writer, and The Einstein Vendetta makes for deeply shocking reading

I absolutely devoured The Einstein Vendetta. It is so moving and the way in which Harding navigates the unresolved nature of the story is quite remarkable. Totally compelling

Praise for The Einstein Vendetta

What’s in a name? Well, if it’s Einstein, quite a lot. Thomas Harding has carved out a significant reputation as a prize-winning writer, and The Einstein Vendetta makes for deeply shocking reading

I absolutely devoured The Einstein Vendetta. It is so moving and the way in which Harding navigates the unresolved nature of the story is quite remarkable. Totally compelling

Praise for The Einstein Vendetta

What’s in a name? Well, if it’s Einstein, quite a lot. Thomas Harding has carved out a significant reputation as a prize-winning writer, and The Einstein Vendetta makes for deeply shocking reading

I absolutely devoured The Einstein Vendetta. It is so moving and the way in which Harding navigates the unresolved nature of the story is quite remarkable. Totally compelling

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