On September 10, 1943, two days after the flight of the King of Italy and the government, the Nazis entered Rome, a prelude to nine months of brutal occupation: roundups and deportations, indiscriminate punitive massacres, serial controls, famine, cold.
The Irish novelist Joseph O’Connor transports us there and guides us there. In my father’s house is the first volume of a trilogy devoted to a Roman escape network which allegedly helped 4,000 people, escaped Allied prisoners and persecuted Jews, to cross into Switzerland during the occupation of Rome by German forces. At the head of this network which really existed, Hugh O’Flaherty (1898-1963), a high-ranking priest and a bit of a rebel attached to the Vatican, a tall 45-year-old Irishman with a red face who had completed three doctorates and spoke fluently seven LANGUAGES.
A 44-hectare “citadel teeming with rumors and envy” that is not legally part of either Rome or Italy, the Vatican had been neutral territory since the Lateran Accords of 1929. Listening above all to his conscience, O’Flaherty took immense risks, both for himself and for the Holy See.
A perfect cover for his activities, O’Flaherty, a particularly complex character, is at the head of an amateur chamber choir which meets at the Vatican, and whose hard core is made up of seven other resistance fighters from all walks of life: a countess Italian, an escaped English soldier, the wife of an Irish diplomat, a journalist, the English ambassador and his assistant.
During their rehearsals — madrigals from the Elizabethan era, Stabat Mater by Palestrina, motet by Josquin or medieval Christmas carol —, Monsignor passed among them to explain to everyone the plan, the routes to follow, the false names and the caches that they had to memorize. Virtuosos in their own way, preparing a mission on Christmas Eve 1943 to distribute money to their accomplices scattered throughout the city.
Each of them, starting with Father O’Flaherty himself, walks a thin line and will play cat and mouse with the most feared man in Rome, the commander of the Gestapo in Rome, the SS-Obersturmbannführer Paul Hauptmann, here become a fictional character largely inspired by the real Herbert Kappler.
With mastery, Joseph O’Connor turns this true episode of the Second World War into fiction, mixing real and invented characters. The author of The star of the seaborn in Dublin in 1963, tells us this story polyphonically, alternating first or third person accounts with testimonies collected for a BBC program in the 1960s.
An intelligent thriller, which thrills and lifts the veil on a fascinating intertwining of gray areas, hideouts, secret passages, false identities, legends and disguises used by these unusual heroes.
“In my father’s house are many mansions”, a verse from the Bible (John 14:2) which gives rise to the title of Joseph O’Connor’s novel, therefore takes on several meanings here – duality, welcome, dissimulation, forgiveness . An incredible and fascinating story, told masterfully.