Six weeks to write for your life… In this blistering story of a ghostwriter haunted by his demonic subject, the Man Booker Prize winner of The Narrow Road to the Deep North turns to lies, crime and literature with devastating effect.
A young and penniless writer, Kif Kehlmann, is rung in the middle of the night by the notorious con man and corporate criminal, Siegfried Heidl. About to go to trial for defrauding the banks of $700 million, Heidl proposes a deal: $10,000 for Kehlmann to ghostwrite his memoir in six weeks.
By turns compelling, comic and chilling, First Person is a haunting journey into the heart of our age, and informed by Flanagan’s own real-life experience as a young man ghost-writing the memoir of a notorious conman.
Where The Narrow Road to the Deep North dealt powerfully with the past, First Person examines a very possible future in which alternative facts, fake identities and charismatic charlatans might lead us all.