The Einstein Vendetta

Hitler, Mussolini, and a true story of murder

Thomas Harding author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd

Publishing:23rd Apr '26

£9.99

This title is due to be published on 23rd April, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

This paperback is available in another edition too:

The Einstein Vendetta cover

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Hanns and Rudolf and The House by the Lake comes a gripping true story of murder, war and injustice in Nazi-occupied Florence

'I absolutely devoured The Einstein Vendetta' EDMUND DE WAAL

'Thomas Harding is a researcher of the first rank' DAILY EXPRESS

'Harding evokes time and place beautifully, while paying forensic attention to detail. The result is a slow burn of cliff-hangers to keep the pages turningSPECTATOR

'The Einstein Vendetta will tug at your heartstrings and prompt righteous outrage' TELEGRAPH

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Italy, August 1944. A unit of German soldiers arrives at a villa near Florence. Villa Il Focardo is home to Robert Einstein, cousin to the most famous scientist in the world, Albert Einstein – a prominent enemy of the Nazi regime. Twelve hours after arriving, the soldiers have vanished – and a family is dead.

This crime – and what happened next – still haunts those who survived. In The Einstein Vendetta, Thomas Harding recounts the story of an until-now untold true crime, one that unspools to reveal Italy’s brutal wartime history – its fall to fascism, antisemitism and bitter partisanship – and a family’s search for just

Praise for The Einstein Vendetta * - *
What’s in a name? Well, if it’s Einstein, quite a lot. Thomas Harding has carved out a significant reputation as a prize-winning writer, and The Einstein Vendetta makes for deeply shocking reading. This is a gripping, finely researched, superbly written and deeply important book -- Anna Sebba * Spectator *
I absolutely devoured The Einstein Vendetta. It is so moving and the way in which Harding navigates the unresolved nature of the story is quite remarkable. Totally compelling * Edmund de Waal *
An absolute triumph. Beautifully judged and infused with humanity and empathy -- Allan Little
Nazi brutality, and the resulting family pain and grief, is vividly recorded. The Einstein Vendettashines a light on these forgotten lives and crimes and on the limits of post-war attempts to secure justice. Harding evokes time and place beautifully, while paying forensic attention to detail. The result is a slow burn of cliff-hangers to keep the pages turning * Spectator *
Scrupulously researched * Herald *
The Einstein Vendetta will tug at your heartstrings and prompt righteous outrage. Harding captures beautifully the general atmosphere of wartime Tuscany, the fear the family must have felt in their last hours and the inhuman toll the executions took. Harding is excellent on the investigations of the case – the details of this ‘slow, hard work. Real shoe-leather work’ could in other hands be dry and dusty, but Harding makes them riveting: archival files poured over in search of vital clues, witnesses undone by failing memory, and always the hope that some small cosmic order will be restored by finding the man who ordered the shootings * Telegraph *
Thomas Harding has carved out a niche unravelling unexplained events. The Einstein Vendetta shows that, although more than eighty years have passed since the Wehrmacht and the SS retreated from Tuscany, there is still substantial appetite to nail down the crimes they committed * Caroline Moorhead, Literary Review *
Did the Führer personally order the hit? Doggedly pursuing his own investigation, Mr Harding interviews surviving witnesses and Einstein family members * Economist *
Praise for Thomas Harding * - *

ISBN: 9781405958462

Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 15mm

Weight: 200g

256 pages