The House of Special Purpose

By John Boyne

Part love story, part historical epic, part tragedy, The House of Special Purpose illuminates an empire at the end of its reign.

Eighty-year-old Georgy Jachmenev is haunted by his past—a past of death, suffering and scandal that will stay with him until the end of his days. Living in England with his beloved wife Zoya, Georgy prepares to make one final journey back to the Russia he once knew and loved, the Russia that both destroyed and defined him.

As Georgy remembers days gone by, we are transported to St. Petersburg in the early 20th century, to the Winter Palace of the Tsar. A time of change, threat and bloody revolution.

And as Georgy overturns the most painful stone of all, we uncover the story of the house of special purpose.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Mar 16, 2010
• ISBN: 9780385668682

John Boyne

John Boyne is the author of Crippen, The Thief of Time, Next of Kin, and the New York Times and internationally bestselling The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Boyne won two Irish Book Awards (the People’s Choice and the Children’s) for The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which was made into a Miramax feature film, and his novels have been translated into more than thirty languages. Ireland's Sunday Business Post named him one of the forty people under forty in Ireland "likely to be the movers and shakers who will define the country's culture, politics, style and economics in 2005 and beyond." Crippen was nominated for the Sunday Independent Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year Award. He lives with his partner in Dublin.