The Paper Man
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3.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A deeply moving interwar romance set between 1930s Austria and 1980s Ireland, based on a real-life unsolved mystery.
1930s Austria. Vienna is a bustling, cosmopolitan city on the brink of war. Matthias Sindelar is an internationally renowned soccer player known as “The Paper Man” because of his because of his effortless weave across the field. When Sindelar speaks out against Hitler, his fame can’t protect him from being placed under Gestapo surveillance. Meanwhile, Sindelar falls in love with a young Jewish girl named Rebekah. As the atmosphere in Vienna darkens under the Nazi regime, Rebekah flees to relatives in Cork, Ireland. Only after she arrives there does she realize she is pregnant with Sindelar’s child. The following year, at the age of 35, The Paper Man is found dead in his apartment.
1980s Ireland. In the Jewish Quarter of Cork, Rebekah’s son Jack Shine discovers a bundle of German letters and newspaper clippings tied with a ribbon while sorting his mother’s belongings. With the help of his German-speaking father-in-law, Jack translates the letters and attempts to piece together his family history and, hopefully, solve the mystery of his father’s identity.
Based on real people and true events, The Paper Man is the story of twentieth-century Europe, the Holocaust, the cost of fame, and love against the odds.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Irish author O'Callaghan (Life Sentences) brings to life 1930s Austria and 1980s Ireland in this mesmerizing tale of love, soccer, and family secrets. On the eve of Germany's 1938 annexation of Austria, the latter's national soccer team captain, Matthias Sindelar, is being surveilled by the Gestapo for mocking Hitler and his team's German opponents on the field. Realizing he's placed his Jewish lover, Rebekah, at risk, he persuades her to leave Vienna and join her cousins in Cork, Ireland. There, Rebekah discovers she is pregnant with Sindelar's child. O'Callaghan then shifts to 1980 Cork, where Rebekah's son, 41-year-old stevedore Jack Shine, finds stashed in his mother's things a bundle of yellowed newspaper clippings about Sindelar and velvet-wrapped letters addressed to her and signed "S." Jack is stunned; his mother, who died 30 years earlier, had never disclosed his father's identity. With help from his father-in-law, Jack begins to trace his family history. There's a natural realism to the Cork scenes, and a romanticizing of mid-1930s Vienna and its coffee houses, dance halls, and art exhibitions, which stands in aching contrast to the coming war and the couple's separation. Even better is the action on the soccer pitch. With Sindelar's team facing a sudden push from the Germans, they revert to "one-touching the play back and forth across the field, toying with their foe like picadors around a weary bull, lancing and weaving away, moving as wind moves." O'Callaghan's storytelling is magnetic.
