“Guarnieri masterfully creates a suspense that keeps the reader with bated breath, page after page, through a great tragicomic novel.”
Le Figaro Littéraire (read all)
“Why among so many millions of individuals on the face of the earth, was he chosen to become Hitler’s double? Could there have been something worse in the world than becoming a monster? Around forty days later he would realize that there was indeed something worse: to be condemned to death in his place.”
Berlin, October 1945. Special agent L**** Gren***** of US counterespionage is an American charged with conducting a new investigation into the life of Adolf Hitler. The official version says that the Führer killed himself in his bunker, but reports of the British Intelligence Service and the Soviet NKVD have not yet clarified the real dynamic of the facts. The interrogation of the Führer’s personal dentist, Dr. Greta von Freundin, has opened a new investigative trail: Department H of the Reich’s secret services, specializing in disguises, counterfeiting, and special operations, had developed a secret plan to allow for Hitler to escape from the bunker. Codename: Operation Janus.
Thus begins a difficult investigation lasting fifteen years, punctuated by discoveries, disappointments, deceptions and surprises. Obsessed by the ghost of Hitler and that of his double, agent Gren***** interrogates reticent and ambiguous witnesses, travels to Germany, Austria, Argentina Italy, Paraguay and Switzerland. In the end he finds the traces of the aristocrat Egon Sommer, the director of Department H, and the equally mysterious Mario Schatten, Hitler’s double: a genial little-understood musician, the sacrificial victim of a terrible machination and two frightening dictatorships – first Nazism, then communism. But when he writes his conclusive report, the fruit of a long work of patience and guile, agent Gren***** by now knows that there is never only one truth: because nothing and no one, not even him, is what or who they seem to be.
Hitler’s Double is a powerful novel about the horrors and the folly of history – an epic and visionary fresco, a historical thriller but also a total narration that blends with complete freedom documentary research and fantastic invention, evoking with the same disturbing fascination real imaginary figures and imaginary people – a grandiose voyage into the darkness that no reader will ever forget.
Luigi Guarnieri
Luigi Guarnieri was born and lives in Rome. Doctor of Human Letters at the University of Pisa and with a diploma from the Experimental Cinematography Centre in Rome, he wrote many theater and radio plays. He is the author of novels translated in many countries: L’atlante criminale. Vita scriteriata di Cesare Lombroso (2000), Tenebre sul Congo (2001), La doppia vita di Vermeer (2004), La sposa ebrea (2006), I sentieri del cielo (2008) and Una strana storia d’amore (2011), Il sosia di Hitler (2014), Forsennatamente Mr Foscolo (2018). His most recent novel is Il segreto di Lucia Joyce (2022).
- Il segreto di Lucia Joyce (Lucia Joyce’s Secret)
- Forsennatamente Mr Foscolo (Furiously Mr Foscolo)
- Il sosia di Hitler (Hitler’s Double)
- Una strana storia d’amore (A Strange Love Story)
“Guarnieri masterfully creates a suspense that keeps the reader with bated breath, page after page, through a great tragicomic novel.”
Le Figaro Littéraire (read all)
Foreign rights sold in
France: Actes Sud
Italian and international editions
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Italy (Mondadori)
Il sosia di Hitler
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France (Actes Sud)
Le sosie d’Adolf Hitler
Rights of previous novels sold to
France: Actes Sud
Germany: Antje Kunstmann
Russia: Colibrì
Poland: Rebis
Portugal: Editorial Presenca
Romania: Grupul Editorial RAO
Serbia: Laguna
South Korea: Dodream