My Father's House cover art

My Father's House

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

My Father's House

By: Joseph O'Connor
Narrated by: Barry Barnes, Stephen Hogan, Barnaby Edwards, Laurence Bouvard, Aoife Duffin, Gertrude Thoma, David John, Roberto Davide, Thomas Hill
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Only £0.99 a month for the first 3 months. Pay £0.99 for the first 3 months, and £8.99/month thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Start my membership

About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

September 1943: German forces occupy Rome. SS officer Paul Hauptmann rules with terror. The war's outcome is far from certain.

An Irish priest, Hugh O'Flaherty, dedicates himself to helping those escaping from the Nazis. His home is Vatican City, the world's smallest state, a neutral, independent country within Rome where the occupiers hold no sway. Here Hugh brings together an unlikely band of friends to hide the vulnerable under the noses of the enemy.
But Hauptmann's net begins closing in on the Escape Line and the need for a terrifyingly audacious mission grows critical. By Christmastime, it's too late to turn back.

Based on an extraordinary true story, My Father's House is a powerful literary thriller from a master of historical fiction. Joseph O'Connor has created an unforgettable novel of love, faith and sacrifice, and what it means to be truly human in the most extreme circumstances.

© Joseph O'Connor 2023 (P) Penguin Audio 2023

 20th Century Biographical Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Historical Fiction Jewish Suspense Thriller & Suspense World Literature Fiction Heartfelt War Rome

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Murder in Tuscany cover art
The Tobacco Girls cover art
Shardlake: The Complete BBC Radio Collection cover art
The Complete George Smiley Radio Dramas cover art
Outback cover art
Broadland cover art
The Snow Killer cover art
My Perfect Daughter cover art
Hunted cover art
Never Forget You cover art
The Silent Child cover art
A Time to Love and a Time to Die cover art
I Am Juden cover art
Strumpet City cover art
Night Soldiers cover art
The Garden of Angels cover art

Critic reviews

A spectacular, thrilling novel...suspense crackles...celebrates triumphant against-the-odds camaraderie.
O'Connor is on stellar form with this ensemble thriller ...while the story's inbuilt tension urges you on, it's the sheer vigour of O'Connor's beautifully turned phrases that really makes the book sing...an expert storyteller
A literary thriller of the highest order. The incarnation of O'Flaherty, the Irish Oskar Schindler, is sublime. What often elevates a writer is compassion, and O'Connor has it in spades... Beautifully crafted, his razor-sharp dialogue is to be savoured, and he employs dark humour to great effect. The plot twists keep on coming
Breathtakingly good writing - O'Connor puts you right there, centre stage in the story and never lets you go (Peter James)
The novel's evocative scene-setting, its propulsive narration and its powerful depiction of bravery and unity in extremis, all make for an engrossing read.
Thrilling... Based on true events, this tense, gripping narrative is rendered in beautifully evocative prose
Impressive and pleasurable...the diverse ventriloquism of O'Connor's novel evokes a city in peril with wonderful vitality
A tale worth re-telling, adorned as it is by the brilliants of O'Connor's impressionistic writing (Best New Thrillers)
A powerful portrait of extraordinary courage
Precisely choreographed... We eagerly follow the characters through uncertainty and disappointment as well as high-stakes jeopardy. O'Connor is playing with the possibilities of multiple narrators, and thinking also about plurality, reliability and the historical record
All stars
Most relevant
Loved this look at the Vatican involvement in WW2.
This is part
Of a trilogy and I cannot wait to read or
Listen to the next one.

Touching and authentic

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Quite astonishing this book.
the way it was written, they lovely phrases and how it all comes together, I thought this was excellent.

Excellent.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is fiction based on real people living in Rome during the Nazi occupation. The action developed like a thriller, so best not to search for information about Father Hugh until you have finished listening! The different voice for each character works really well and because of that, the audio version may be a more enjoyable experience compared to reading the book.

Audio version may be more enjoyable

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Great story, the writing through each characters experience and threading their journeys throughout the book makes it exciting and the characters endearing. The production and performance is one of the best I’ve heard. Definitely worth a listen.

Amazing audio book!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I knew little of the circumstances of war time Rome once the Nazis took over. This novel reveals so much of the various facets of humanity in extreme conditions. It also moves with the power of the best thrillers. The performances are excellent, I have particularly enjoyed Stephen Hogan's narration in every book he has read.

A beautiful yet harrowing story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews