About this item
Inspired by the true story of Melita Norwood, an eighty-seven-year old woman who was unmasked as the KGB's longest serving British spy in 1999, Red Joan is a well-researched and briskly paced historical novel that questions the black-and-white morality of wartime society. Brilliantly structured and psychologically acute, this compelling novel provides no easy answers, instead offering a kaleidoscope of conflicting choices and questionable motives. And once the authorities close in, is there ever such a thing as atonement and forgiveness?
About the Author
Jennie Rooney was born in 1980 and grew up in Liverpool, Zambia and Bromley. She attended Newstead Wood School in Orpington, before reading History at Cambridge University. She taught English for a while in a primary school in France before training as a solicitor in London and Paris. Her first novel, Inside the Whale, was written during this time and was published by Chatto & Windus in 2008, and was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, the Waterstones New Writer of the Year Award, and was a Richard and Judy Debut Book Club choice. Her second novel, The Opposite of Falling, is also published by Chatto & Windus. She now lives in West London, where she writes and teaches History and English. She is also a regular creative writing tutor for Skyros Writers' Lab and is a patron of the National Academy of Writing. She is currently working on her third novel and a screenplay.
