Review of The Ghost by Robert Harris

Robert Harris has written a critique of the Labour government in novel form.
The premise is brilliant – former Prime Minister Adam Lang is indicted on war crimes charges through endorsing the kidnapping and torture of suspects by the CIA. The agent of said ex-PM’s destruction is his former colleague and ex-Foreign Secretary. The ghost writer protagonist tells the tale in a Philip Marlowesque first person, having uncovered the plot during the course of his duties ‘ghosting’ the ex-Prime Ministerial memoirs. He is Lang’s alter ego personally and professionally – literally his shadow and his ghost. Packed with references and allusions to those he has modelled the characters on – direct comparisons do not have to be drawn because the audience knows for whom the plot tolls. The narrative voice of Robert Harris reveals a man writing with the hot indignation of one who knows of what he speaks and uses the novel’s creative devices to tell a wider truth: the satire borne of intimate knowledge.

In a television documentary on the Tony Blair years, Harris revealed his disappointment about his generation not living up to the promise of their own and others expectation when in power. This book is his response – a polemic disguised brilliantly as a satirical page-turning thriller of exceptional quality.

The novel is an encapsulation of the hopes and subsequent disappointments
of the generation that came to power, influence and prominence in the late 1990s. After a dozen years, the bright new dawn has given way to the dark night of the Iraq war, extraordinary rendition and the War on Terror; ‘governing for the many not the few’ ends up lining corporation pockets; ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with the United States in its hour of sorrow ends up with acquiescence in extraordinary rendition and the condoning of torture. Written as much in sorrow as in anger by an insider who knows the way governments work as well as the personalities involved, it is a very powerful critique.