Transcription
The magnificent novel from the bestselling author of A God In Ruins
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3.9 • 76 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
**PRE-ORDER KATE ATKINSON'S NEW BOOK, OUR NOBLE SELVES, NOW - AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 2026**
The magnificent novel by bestselling and award-winning Kate Atkinson
'Pageturner' Evening Standard
'Wise, funny and paced like a thriller' Observer
'A triumph...inventive, atmospheric and witty' Good Housekeeping
'Reminds you how deeply satisfying good fiction can be' Sunday Telegraph
'Shows [Kate] at the peak of her powers' Matt Haig, bestselling author of THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY
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In 1940, eighteen-year-old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the shadowy world of espionage when she is sent to a department of MI5 monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathisers. Once the war has ended, she presumes that part of her life is over for ever.
But ten years later, working as a producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from that past. A different war is being fought, now on a different battleground. This time she's under threat. A reckoning is due, and it is soon clear that there will be no action without consequence.
Transcription is a bravura novel of extraordinary power, wit and empathy. It is a triumphant work of fiction from one of this country’s most exceptional writers.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
German sympathisers in 1940s London weren’t just ferocious fascists and brilliant double agents. The movement’s backbone was bourgeois housewives and average tradesmen focused on preserving the status quo. It’s into this consciously dull network that 18-year-old Juliet Armstrong is first drafted to be a spy. Following days of clerical drudgery and nights prowling the streets during blackouts, Juliet’s ambitions for “real” espionage work are fulfilled…in ways she can’t shake, even decades later. In her 10th novel, Kate Atkinson returns to the world of World War II, proving her singular talent for writing historical fiction that makes us forget we’re not reading an eyewitness account.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Atkinson's suspenseful novel (following A God in Ruins) is enlivened by its heroine's witty, sardonic voice as she is transformed from an innocent, unsophisticated young woman into a spy for Britain's MI5 during WWII. Initially recruited to transcribe secretly recorded conversations between British fascist sympathizers who think they are conspiring with the Gestapo, Juliet Armstrong is one day given an infiltration assignment (and a gun), during which she discovers an important document and just like that, she becomes an undercover agent. Her growing realization of the serious nature of what at first seems like an "espionage lark" is made more intriguing by her attraction to her enigmatic boss. Juliet finds herself running a safe house for a Russian defector until the war's end, after which she lives in an unspecified location abroad for decades. It's in the 1970s that agents return and insist that she get back in the game as a double agent, and she realizes there's no exit. If Atkinson initially challenges credibility because Juliet slides too quickly from being a naive 18-year-old into a clever escape artist and cool conspirator, her transition into idealistic patriot and then ultimately jaded pawn in the espionage world is altogether believable. The novel's central irony is that the desperation for victory in a noble cause later becomes tainted with ruthless political chicanery. The book ends on an uncertain note for Juliet, a poignant denouement for this transportive, wholly realized historical novel.
Customer Reviews
A little too highbrow for my taste. Unless you went to university and studied the classics and Latin
The plot moved at a strange pace. Sometimes quickly but often tediously slowly. One knew that there would be something to be revealed eventually but it came too late for me.
And throughout the book the annoying references to the arts which seemed to be included to make the reader feel inadequate through ignorance.