Our Noble Selves

The #1 international bestselling author of Life After Life returns with a thrilling tale of post-World War II London, a city eager to put the dark days of the war behind it, but where the peace proves as tricky to navigate as the past.

When foreign correspondent turned war reporter Harry Flynn returns to Britain in 1949 from Singapore, held for years as a POW, he takes a quiet office job with The Festival of Britain, a nostalgic government-funded endeavor to celebrate British creativity, grit, and ingenuity. There, he joins an oddball team of misfits, ne’er-do-wells, and downright chancers helping to ready the Festival of Britain for launch.

But when one of Flynn’s dates, a surly Frenchwoman, goes missing, everything is upended. The last person to see her prior to her disappearance, Flynn is thrust into the center of the investigation. At first, he finds the suspicions preposterous. But it’s true he has no memory of the hours following the Frenchwoman’s departure, and there’s the fact of the nasty black eye he had upon waking. As evidence mounts, Flynn begins to wonder, could he have killed her? And, importantly, are any of his new friends actually foes?

With her unique portraiture of place, Atkinson now turns her light on a nation rebuilding and the lengths some might go to determine its future. Charming, brilliantly plotted, and gripping as ever, Our Noble Selves cements Atkinson’s place as one of the greatest chroniclers of our times.