What do you think?
Rate this book
Writing Man: A Stolen Story that Changed the World
When a disillusioned German writer finds a mysterious manuscript scripted in the Hebrew alphabet, and publishes it as his own, he is unaware of the consequences that are to follow, or that his journey through treachery and redemption will lead him to a surprising discovery about his own identity.
In a world captivated by a story he never wrote, Europe’s most celebrated and reclusive novelist Tobias Pilzerhoff, lives a life of privilege. Sequestered away in a remote castle somewhere outside Düsseldorf, the truth of his famous novels origin looks set to remain hidden, until a former Nazi soldier recalls a prisoner, one who scribed a captivating odyssey in a WW2 death camp; a story identical to Tobias Pilzerhoff’s world-famous novel, The Scent of Heaven.
If this novel is to offer any deeper meaning or message, it is that humans must somehow learn to treat each other better. Only then will cycles of trauma, loss and sorrow come to a permanent end.
In a world captivated by a story he never wrote, Europe’s most celebrated and reclusive novelist Tobias Pilzerhoff, lives a life of privilege. Sequestered away in a remote castle somewhere outside Düsseldorf, the truth of his famous novels origin looks set to remain hidden, until a former Nazi soldier recalls a prisoner, one who scribed a captivating odyssey in a WW2 death camp; a story identical to Tobias Pilzerhoff’s world-famous novel, The Scent of Heaven.
If this novel is to offer any deeper meaning or message, it is that humans must somehow learn to treat each other better. Only then will cycles of trauma, loss and sorrow come to a permanent end.
251 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 14, 2024
20 people are currently reading
95 people want to read
About the author
Frances Flannery
2 books1 followerFrances Flannery holds an M.Phil in Creative Writing from Trinity College Dublin, and a first-class honours H.Dip in Business and E-Commerce from The National College of Ireland. Writing Man published on Bloomsday 2022 is her first fictional novel. Non fiction works include Gut Happiness due for official publication in 2023.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 84 reviews
August 14, 2022
We ❤ this book and we hope you enjoy it too.
April 28, 2022
The wonderful people of Leopold Bloom Press were kind enough to send me a lovely box of beautiful literature to review and delicious chocolate.
The result was pure indulgence from Frances Flannery's novel, 'Writing Man', and Lily O'Brien's creamy caramel & sea salt chocolate.
'Writing Man' is set in Europe, against the backdrop of the 2nd World War.
'' In a world captivated by a story he never wrote, Europe's most celebrated and reclusive novelist lives a life of privilege. Sequestered away in a remote castle somewhere outside Düsseldorf, the truth of his famous novels origin looks set to remain hidden, until a former Nazi soldier recalls a prisoner, a girl who scribed a captivating odyssey in a WW2 death camp; a story identical to Tobias Pilferhoff's world-famous novel, The Scent of Heaven.''
The story slowly pulls you in from the very beginning and then you bare witness to writing craftsmanship brilliance in every page.
This is not a story to rush through to reach the finale. This is one to indulge in and savor sentence by sentence until you ultimately finish the story, close your eyes, hold the book close to you and mentally relieve the extraordinary reading experience for a few more moments.
Heartbreaking and gorgeous. Well researched and thought provoking, 'Writing Man', takes you on a mental journey through timelines, from deathcamps to the streets of Frankfurt, Berlin, Duesseldorf, Brussels, to experience sounds, smells and feelings, beauty and tragedy.
With a beautiful, cinematic writing style and character building craftsmanship, the author manages to deliver a captivating historical fiction offering, that I place as a modern classic and instantly one of my top ten reads for the year.
Frances Flannery has managed to send me on a wonderful journey with this phenomenal book. She is definitely an author that I will keep my eye on for future releases. A solid 5star read and a wonderful reading experience of a book.
'Writing Man' is out on June 16th via Amazon and available for pre-order at www.leopoldbloom.ie
The result was pure indulgence from Frances Flannery's novel, 'Writing Man', and Lily O'Brien's creamy caramel & sea salt chocolate.
'Writing Man' is set in Europe, against the backdrop of the 2nd World War.
'' In a world captivated by a story he never wrote, Europe's most celebrated and reclusive novelist lives a life of privilege. Sequestered away in a remote castle somewhere outside Düsseldorf, the truth of his famous novels origin looks set to remain hidden, until a former Nazi soldier recalls a prisoner, a girl who scribed a captivating odyssey in a WW2 death camp; a story identical to Tobias Pilferhoff's world-famous novel, The Scent of Heaven.''
The story slowly pulls you in from the very beginning and then you bare witness to writing craftsmanship brilliance in every page.
This is not a story to rush through to reach the finale. This is one to indulge in and savor sentence by sentence until you ultimately finish the story, close your eyes, hold the book close to you and mentally relieve the extraordinary reading experience for a few more moments.
Heartbreaking and gorgeous. Well researched and thought provoking, 'Writing Man', takes you on a mental journey through timelines, from deathcamps to the streets of Frankfurt, Berlin, Duesseldorf, Brussels, to experience sounds, smells and feelings, beauty and tragedy.
With a beautiful, cinematic writing style and character building craftsmanship, the author manages to deliver a captivating historical fiction offering, that I place as a modern classic and instantly one of my top ten reads for the year.
Frances Flannery has managed to send me on a wonderful journey with this phenomenal book. She is definitely an author that I will keep my eye on for future releases. A solid 5star read and a wonderful reading experience of a book.
'Writing Man' is out on June 16th via Amazon and available for pre-order at www.leopoldbloom.ie
May 20, 2024
This magical novel has a fairytale quality. Indeed fairytales are referenced several times in the book.
The locations: Frankfurt, Berlin, Brussels, a castle near Dusseldorf, are vividly described. I could smell and taste the chocolate in that chocolatier's a stone's throw from the Grand Place.
Writing Man explores writing compelled by a natural, creative impulse. It also looks at writing driven by ego, by that desire to be a writer, and to be seen as such in the eyes of the world.
The story telling style was a bit ornate for my taste, but in a way that elaborate style fitted with the fairytale feel.
The ending was a wonderful surprise. Overall, I am delighted to have read this little book.
September 6, 2022
This book rocks.
November 17, 2023
First, declaration of interest. I was not sent this book together with some delicious hand-made chocolates to review it (unlike some of the five star reviews). I bought it myself in a shop.
Chapter one almost stopped me in my tracks. It introduces a one-dimensional wannabe author who is given so many dislikeable personal qualities that they occupy most of the chapter. However, the story then got going and pulled me in. A lost manuscript in Hebrew from the Nazi era, a man whose obsession with documenting the destruction causes him to remain in Frankfurt during the collapse of the reich.
But little by little, and then in a bewildering welter, the plot requires coincidences that are individually so implausible that collectively they had me wondering "now what?".
And it is sad to say but it's apparently impossible to write a novel today without some heroic person from a Nazi death camp, and, sure enough, the person appears on cue. And along with them appear the Good Soldier, the Passer-by Caught Up In It … the people already familiar to us from "The girl who kicked the dragon tattoo violin-maker of Auschwitz".
The ending requires an astonishing plethora of coincidences (a far away farmer whose drains for no good reason run under the property, a welded lead box filled with decomposing vegetation, a dropped cigarette)– I almost stopped reading again.
But I continued. The Catastrophic End is followed by the Happy Ending, made possible by introducing the writings of Nietzsche and explaining their relevance to the ethical dilemma. And a New Life for the suffering protagonists, of course.
The book isn't helped by the poor editing of the press. Line spacing changes for no reason, and there are significant errors that spellcheck misses because they are real words (rough rather than rouge for example), and punctuation. These do the author no favours, and should have been proofread before pressing go.
Yes, there is considerable potential in this book, but the author will have to stop relying on coincidence and stereotype to do their work.
Chapter one almost stopped me in my tracks. It introduces a one-dimensional wannabe author who is given so many dislikeable personal qualities that they occupy most of the chapter. However, the story then got going and pulled me in. A lost manuscript in Hebrew from the Nazi era, a man whose obsession with documenting the destruction causes him to remain in Frankfurt during the collapse of the reich.
But little by little, and then in a bewildering welter, the plot requires coincidences that are individually so implausible that collectively they had me wondering "now what?".
And it is sad to say but it's apparently impossible to write a novel today without some heroic person from a Nazi death camp, and, sure enough, the person appears on cue. And along with them appear the Good Soldier, the Passer-by Caught Up In It … the people already familiar to us from "The girl who kicked the dragon tattoo violin-maker of Auschwitz".
The ending requires an astonishing plethora of coincidences (a far away farmer whose drains for no good reason run under the property, a welded lead box filled with decomposing vegetation, a dropped cigarette)– I almost stopped reading again.
But I continued. The Catastrophic End is followed by the Happy Ending, made possible by introducing the writings of Nietzsche and explaining their relevance to the ethical dilemma. And a New Life for the suffering protagonists, of course.
The book isn't helped by the poor editing of the press. Line spacing changes for no reason, and there are significant errors that spellcheck misses because they are real words (rough rather than rouge for example), and punctuation. These do the author no favours, and should have been proofread before pressing go.
Yes, there is considerable potential in this book, but the author will have to stop relying on coincidence and stereotype to do their work.
May 16, 2022
I was sent this book by the lovely people over at Leopoldo bloom press in exchange for a review .
Writing man is the not the typical story I read but I loved the story nevertheless . This novel is historical fiction and centres around WW2 and the holocaust .I really enjoyed this book and it’s made me want to seek out more historical fiction to add to my shelves
This book is beautifully written and at times very thought provoking and sad . The pacing of this book was incredibly well timed with its content as it allowed the reader to not just zoom through the book to the ending but enjoy the book and it’s contents.
I highly recommended for all historical fiction lovers out there .
Writing man is the not the typical story I read but I loved the story nevertheless . This novel is historical fiction and centres around WW2 and the holocaust .I really enjoyed this book and it’s made me want to seek out more historical fiction to add to my shelves
This book is beautifully written and at times very thought provoking and sad . The pacing of this book was incredibly well timed with its content as it allowed the reader to not just zoom through the book to the ending but enjoy the book and it’s contents.
I highly recommended for all historical fiction lovers out there .
Read
October 28, 2025An emerging writer who puts the word "emerging" to bed.
The unassuming title belies a rich tapestry.
Cinematic in scope.
Diary format reminiscent of Bram Stoker's Dracula.
It merits reading and re-reading.
Methodical, intricate plot.
Measured, humorous, serious, poetic, page-turner, and
EXOTIC (i.e.not stuck in the usual morass of bashing the mores
of old Ireland....Thank God for something "fresh" at last
from a modern Irish writer.
Five stars.
The unassuming title belies a rich tapestry.
Cinematic in scope.
Diary format reminiscent of Bram Stoker's Dracula.
It merits reading and re-reading.
Methodical, intricate plot.
Measured, humorous, serious, poetic, page-turner, and
EXOTIC (i.e.not stuck in the usual morass of bashing the mores
of old Ireland....Thank God for something "fresh" at last
from a modern Irish writer.
Five stars.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 29, 2024
I’ve given up on this book, the writer has thrown every obscure word she can think of at it in the first two chapters (all I managed to read). I’m no academic but I think some of her words are not appropriate to the sentence. It is probably a good story, but life is too short for me to continue with it.
October 19, 2022
An excellent prose style and a nice idea for a story that I found strangely haunting in the way it remained with me. I thought the ending was absurd and seemed to come on at a speed that went against the rhythm of the novel but I'm glad I read it.
May 6, 2024
Having picked this up in my local library, I had no expectations. I am prone to judging a book by its cover, and what a lovely book this was. A thoroughly enjoyable read from start to finish. Could not put it down.
May 6, 2024
The portrayal of the embittered writer desperate to be held up as a man of letters made me squelch in my Wellingtons with delight. I am sure I have met this man many times before. Writing Man had me from the first sentence and held me spellbound to its brilliant end.
July 11, 2022
I finished reading Writing Man. It is an excellent book, good enough to win literary prizes.
August 14, 2022
The one book you must read this year! FANTASTIC. Great story.
August 14, 2022
A page-turner. Gripping. What a story. Will definitely be looking out for this writers follow up novel. Loved it.
August 15, 2022
A magical story that stayed with me. Highly recommended.
August 15, 2022
Excellent!!!
August 16, 2022
Absolutely brilliant. !!!
August 17, 2022
Love this book. ❤ 💙 💜
August 17, 2022
Im now reading it again from the start.
August 18, 2022
An exceptional piece of literature. Truly wonderful
August 18, 2022
Uplifting and imaginative. Highly recommended
August 19, 2022
Would not have believed a story about war could be so uplifting.
August 19, 2022
Writing Man is a rare and beautifully written novel. Definitely worth reading.
August 22, 2022
I wish I could start all over again and not know the ending. It was brilliant from start to finish. Will definitely make the international best sellers list.
August 22, 2022
A masterpiece. An enjoyable and gripping story. Would definitely recommend Writing Man to a friend.
August 23, 2022
If you read one book this year, read Writing Man. It absolutely flippin’ brilliant.
August 23, 2022
Why are there not more novels like this. I fell madly in love with the story and could not wait to get back to the book as soon as I had to put it down. Legendary status.
August 24, 2022
This is an fantastic book. Its well written, and the story is punchy and impactful.
August 24, 2022
Literally could not put Writing Man down. Finished it in two sittings.
August 25, 2022
Some books just stay with you. Writing Man is definitely that for me.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 84 reviews