The Ghost (Robert Harris novel)

The Ghost is a 2007 political thriller by the English writer and journalist Robert Harris. It is the fictional account of a ghostwriter hired to write the autobiography of a Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The novel was inspired in part by the person and career of Tony Blair, whom Harris has known since before Blair became prime minister of the UK.^[1]

Plot

The majority of the action takes place on the island of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, USA. Former British Prime Minister Adam Lang is writing his memoirs and seeks the services of an unnamed ghostwriter to assist him, after his last assistant (his aide Michael McAra) fell off a boat on a lake and died in suspicious circumstances. Lang is soon embroiled in a political scandal, when a memorandum is leaked that reveals he approved the transfer of British citizens to Guantanamo Bay for interrogation. Lang's former foreign secretary Richard Rycart then accuses Lang of war crimes, and a trial of Lang seems possible. The narrator must balance his commitments to Lang's memoirs with the increasing jeopardy he is placed under – romantically, politically and physically.

Politics

Robert Harris has observed in a National Public Radio interview^[2] that politicians such as Lang (and his prototype, Tony Blair), especially when they have served long in high office, tend to become divorced from everyday realities, read little, have a limited general outlook (in part due to their inescapable focus on affairs of immediate concern) and thus have need of "ghostwriters." Additionally (and paradoxically), according to Harris, Blair himself in effect acted as ghostwriter to his American ally, President George W. Bush, when advocating for the latter's invasion of Iraq – which Blair argued for better than the President himself.

Notes

See also

• Politics in fiction