Thirteen O’Clock

by Thurston Clarke

One day in March 1945, in recently liberated Paris, a nervous George Orwell burst into Ernest Hemingway’s hotel room and asked to borrow a pistol. He was afraid, he said, that someone was trying to kill him.

But who would want to kill Orwell?

In this suspenseful fictional answer, Thurston Clarke blends the facts of Orwell’s life with a thrilling tale of intrigue that begins forty years after Orwell borrowed Hemingway’s revolver, when Orwell biographer Gina Baldwin narrowly escapes a gunman’s bullet on the remote island of Jura. As Gina searches for a lost notebook of Orwell’s she uncovers a treacherous betrayal in the Spanish Civil War that lies at the black heart of a mystery that sounds suspiciously like Big Brother’s 1984…

277 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1984

About the author

Thurston Clarke has written eleven widely acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction, including three New York Times Notable Books. His 'Pearl Harbor Ghosts' was the basis for a CBS documentary, and his bestselling 'Lost Hero', a biography of Raoul Wallenberg, was made into an award-winning NBC miniseries.

Clarke's articles have appeared in Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many other publications. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and other awards, he lives with his wife and three daughters in upstate New York.